But even while the Judge was scrambling up from his chair with stammering words on his lips, even as the Squire seized the white hand that fluttered above his own, another visitor entered the office. This visitor--and a very obstreperous visitor it was--threw his hat upon the table, squared his elbows and glared at the three in turn. It was Captain Kleber Willard of the _Lycurgus Webb_. His dark seaman’s face was streaked with purple blotches, his eyes were bloodshot and sullen, and it was apparent that passion and liquor had combined to give Captain Willard an unamiable temper. His gaze first singled the Squire with an especially furious squint of hatred, but his father spoke to him and he whirled on the Judge. “Why didn’t you do as you agreed?” he shouted. “Me to Buenos Ayres and back, off earnin’ a dollar, where I couldn’t protect myself, and you promisin’ to keep that deal covered! Why didn’t you do it, I say?” The old man turned a pitiful glance on his daughter and attempted to quiet the angry man with words spoken close to his ear, but the Captain twisted away from him. “It’s time the whole of this family knows what the others are about,” he raged. “I ain’t doin’ anything that I’m ashamed of. The rest of ye see to it that you ain’t, either. I tell ye I won’t keep still. Sylvene Willard is old enough to know bus’ness, or she can leave the room. If some that I can see here had any instincts of a gentleman they’d get out, too, when a family is talkin’ its bus’ness. I tell you, father, you’ve got to explain to me how you let me get dropped for ten thousand. You didn’t send Bradish the margins as you agreed. You dropped him, too. It’s no use for you to hush-a-bye me. I know you did it. “The _Webb_ wasn’t a half a day in New York when Bradish came down to show me the documents. It was there in black and white. You backed out and dumped us. You dumped Bradish. He hasn’t got the price of a meal. I tell you I won’t shut up! If you had gone in on that last deal that Bradish told you about we’d have cleaned up a fortune. We depended on you, the both of us, to furnish the money. You didn’t do it. You sent King up there and then backed out on him. There isn’t any other explanation for it--you backed out on him. It only needed money and you didn’t send it.” He stamped around the room, picked up his hat, threw it down again and went on with his bitter complaints.