“Comments!” shouted the seaman. “Comments! I ain’t got language enough to make comments! Old Dan’l Webster in his palmiest days couldn’t talk fast enough to express it. I’ll bet a thousand to one I know what the trouble is with you, father. I’ll bet it’s just as King said it was. That skin lawyer has got next to you and robbed you--he and his brother, the two of ’em! There’s a good reason for your not havin’ money to protect your own son if the Look family has got their claws in here. Do you hear me, Sylvene? A thousand to one the dogs have ruined this family! Why didn’t you send the old man to the lunatic asylum before you let him ram us underground this way?” In his fury he had been clutching up the papers on the table and throwing them about. Now he suddenly bent forward with goggling eyes, his hands on the arms of the chair, and stared long at some slips of paper that he had uncovered. He picked them up one after the other, his hands trembling so violently that the sheets crackled. “Four notes runnin’ to Phineas Look and signed by Collamore Willard!” he yelled. “Four notes and each for five thousand dollars. Four notes! Look at ’em!” He staggered up and thrust them under the astonished gaze of Sylvena, but with one stride the Squire was there and ripped them from his grasp. “He has robbed us, Sylvene! He’s robbed us,” the Captain went on, mouthing like a madman. “He’s got all our money and put us in debt to him beside. The thief! The land pirate!” He was making for the lawyer with his fists upraised, but Squire Phin struck them down and forced the furious man back into his chair. He held him there, glowering down on him with a menace that would have quelled a wild beast. “Go ahead, Phin Look,” whimpered the Captain; “put on another scar to match the one your brother made!” “I propose you shall listen to reason, Kleber,” Squire Phin fairly hissed, “even if I have to hold you by the throat while I give you the truth. I tell you again to come to my office, and if I fail to satisfy you, then the law is open to you.” The seaman sank back in his chair limply and the lawyer left him. But as he turned to Sylvena with a look of infinite pity on his face, Captain Willard leaped up. “Don’t you see now that he has done father and us out of every dollar, Sylvene?” he wailed. “Don’t you believe me when I say----” But she came forward hastily and put both her hands into the Squire’s, looked up at him trustfully and said: “I believe in my--my--husband, that is to be, and that is the first and the surest duty of a good wife!” The Squire put his arm about her, bent down and kissed her, a happy sob in his throat choking back the words he wanted to say. The son stared at them a moment, his jaw dropping, whirled on his father with a curse, and then clacking his fists together in impotent rage, rushed out of the office with a bang of the door that made the little building shiver.