He trudged to the rear room, hat in hand, and timidly knocked on the door. As it was opened, the quick ear of Captain O’Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man: “A steamer of the tonnage of this _Tyneshire Glen_ is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly sea-worthy and in good repair and Captain Handy also recommends her----” The door closed behind Captain Handy, and O’Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically and observed to Johnny Kent: “Did ye size up this Handy man? You know the kind. Every big port has them: broken shipmasters, disrated mates, that aren’t fit to take a scow to sea.” “Sure! They’ve borrowed money off me from Baltimore to Singapore. This Captain Handy must have sighted an easy mark in the offing.” O’Shea pondered for a moment and asked: “Did ye hear mention of the _Tyneshire Glen_ steamer just now? Do you happen to know the vessel? I can’t place her.” Johnny Kent grunted as if he had sat upon a tack and answered with heated emphasis: “Maybe it’s the old _Tyneshire Glen_ that was carryin’ cotton out of Savannah years ago. I went aboard to see her chief once and her plates was rusted so thin that I could have thrown a wrench through ’em.” Captain Handy had left the door of the back room unlatched and a gusty draught of sea-breeze blew it partly open. The watchful pair in the tap-room had a glimpse of Captain Handy standing stolidly between His Majesty and the minister of finance, and heard him huskily declaim: “The _Tyneshire Glen_ is a bargain at thirty thousand pounds, and you needn’t take my word for it. Baron Strothers here has interviewed the brokers that have her for sale, and he knows the price they put on her.” “I have full confidence in the judgment of my minister of finance, with Captain Handy’s expert opinion to assist him,” easily replied His Majesty. “Most of my papers were lost at sea,” hastily put in Captain Handy, as if to forestall an awkward question. “They were tied up together, your Royal ’ighness, when the _Falls of Clyde_ steamer went down and I saved the lives of forty-seven passengers and was the last man to leave her when she foundered under my feet. The newspapers praised me so that a modest man ’ud blush to repeat it.” “Baron Strothers has investigated your record, so he informs me, and he advises me that you are to be depended upon,” was the warm assurance. In the tap-room O’Shea chuckled skeptically and said to Johnny Kent: “’Tis likely enough he lost his papers, but I mistrust his version of the story. What kind of a flim-flam is this, anyhow? The king and the minister of finance are discussing a rotten ship and a rotten skipper as if the both of them were to be taken seriously.”