It was plain that the woman, who had begun in trepidation, was confused and abashed the more by the hard frown with which Captain Nat regarded her. The frown persisted for some moments; and then my grandfather said: "Don't know what you mean. If somebody bought anything of a friend o' yours, an' your friend wants to sell him something else, I suppose he can take it to him, can't he? And if it's any value, there's no reason he shouldn't buy it, so far as I know." And Grandfather Nat strode on. The woman murmured some sort of acknowledgment, and fell back, and in a moment I had forgotten her; though I remembered her afterward, for good reason enough. In fact, it was no later than that evening. I was sitting in the bar-parlour with Grandfather Nat, who had left the bar to the care of the potman. My grandfather was smoking his pipe, while I spelled and sought down the narrow columns of _Lloyd's List_ for news of my father's ship. It was my grandfather's way to excuse himself from reading, when he could, on the plea of unsuitable eyes; though I suspect that, apart from his sight, he found reading a greater trouble than he was pleased to own. "There's nothing here about the _Juno_, Grandfather Nat," I said. "Nothing anywhere." "Ah," said my grandfather, "La Guaira was the last port, an' we must keep eyes on the list for Barbadoes. Maybe the mail's late." Most of Lloyd's messages came by mail at that time. "Let's see," he went on; "Belize, La Guaira, Barbadoes"; and straightway began to figure out distances and chances of wind. Grandfather Nat had been considering whether or not we should write to my father to tell him that my mother was dead, and he judged that there was little chance of any letter reaching the _Juno_ on her homeward passage. "Belize, La Guaira, Barbadoes," said Grandfather Nat, musingly. "It's the rough reason thereabout, an' it's odds she may be blown out of her course. But the mail----" He stopped and turned his head. There was a sudden stamp of feet outside the door behind us, a low and quick voice, a heavy thud against the door, and then a cry--a dreadful cry, that began like a stifled scream and ended with a gurgle. Grandfather Nat reached the door at a bound, and as he flung it wide a man came with it and sank heavily at his feet, head and one shoulder over the threshold, and an arm flung out stiffly, so that the old man stumbled across it as he dashed at a dark shadow without. I was hard at my grandfather's heels, and in a flash of time I saw that another man was rising from over the one on the doorsill. But for the stumble Grandfather Nat would have had him. In that moment's check the fellow spun round and dashed off, striking one of the great posts with his shoulder, and nearly going down with the shock.