“You are wrong there,” said Mr. Easterfield.  “My wife tells me that Miss Asher has frequently talked to her about you and her life here, and it is certain she has—­”

“Oh, that does not make any difference,” interrupted the captain.  “I am talking about things as they are now.  It was all very well as long as things seemed to be going right, but I believe in people who stand by you when things seem to be going wrong, and who keep on standing by you until they know how they are going, and that is exactly what she did not do.  Now, there was Dick Lancaster; he came to me and asked me squarely about that affair.  To be sure, I cut him off short, for it angered me to think that he, or anybody else, should have such an idea of me, and, besides, it was none of his business.  But it should have been her business; she ought to have made it her business; and, even if the thing had stood differently, I would have told her exactly how it did stand; and then she could have said to me what she thought about it, and what she was going to do.  But instead of that, she just made up her mind about me, and away went everything.  Yes, sir, everything.  I can’t tell you the plans I had made for her and for myself, and, I may say, for Dick Lancaster.  If it suited her, I wanted her to marry him, and if it suited her I wanted to go and live with them in his college town, or any other place they might want to go.  Again and again, after I knew Dick, have I gone over this thing and planned it out this way, and that way, but always with us three in the middle of everything.  Do you see that?” continued the captain after a slight pause, as he drew from his pocket a dainty little pearl paper-cutter.  “That belongs to her.  She used to sit out here, and cut the leaves of books as she read them.  I can see her little hand now as it went sliding along the edges of the pages.  When she went away she left it on the bench, and I took it.  And I’ve kept it in my pocket to take out when I sit here, and cut books with it when I have ’em.  I haven’t many books that ain’t cut, but I’ve sat here and cut ’em till there wasn’t any left.  And then I cut a lot of old volumes of Coast Survey Reports.  It is a foolish thing for an old man to do, but then—­but then—­well, you see, I did it.”

There was a choke in the captain’s voice as he leaned over to put the paper-cutter in his pocket and to pick up his pipe, which he had laid on the bench beside him.  Mr. Easterfield was touched and surprised.  He would not have supposed the captain to be a man of such tender sentiment.  And he took him at once to his heart.  “It is a shame,” his thoughts ran, “for this man to be separated from the niece he so loves.  She is a cold-hearted girl, or she does not understand him.  It must not be.”

Had he been a woman he would have said all this, but, being a man, he found it difficult to break the silence which followed the captain’s last words.  He did not know what to say, although he had no hesitation in making up his mind what he was going to do about it all.  He arose.