“Come to get a marriage license?” the squire inquired.  Chamberlain immediately decided that he didn’t like him, but he foolishly blushed.

“No, it’s another sort of matter,” he said stiffly,

“Not a marriage license!  All right, my boy,” agreed Squire Cady.  “’Tisn’t the fashion to marry young nowadays, I know, though ’twas the fashion in my day.  Not a wedding!  What then?”

Then Chamberlain set to work to tell his story.  Placed, as it were, face to face with the law, he realized that he was but poorly equipped for carrying on actual proceedings, even though they might be against Belial himself; but he made a good front and persuaded Squire Cady that there was something to be done.  The squire was visibly affected at the mention of the old red house, and fell into a revery, looking off toward the fields and tapping his spectacles on the desk.

“Hercules Thayer and I read Latin together when we were boys,” he said, turning to Chamberlain with a reminiscent smile on his old face.  “And he licked me for liking Hannibal better than Scipio.”  He laughed heartily.

The faces of the old sometimes become like pictured parchments, and seem to be lighted from within by a faint, steady gleam, almost more beautiful than the fire of youth.  As Chamberlain looked, he decided once more, and finally, that he liked Squire Cady.

“But I got even with Hercules on Horace,” the squire went on, chuckling at his memories.  “However,” he sighed, as he turned toward his desk again, “this isn’t getting out that warrant for you.  We don’t want any malefactors loose about Charlesport; but you’ll have to be sure you know what you’re doing.  Do you know the man—­can you identify him?”

“I think I should know him; but in any case Miss Redmond at the old red house can identify him.”

“We don’t want to arrest anybody till we’re sure we know what we’re about—­that’s poor law,” said Squire Cady, in a pedagogical and squire-ish tone, as if Chamberlain were a mere boy.  But the Englishman didn’t mind that.

“I think I can satisfy you that we’ve got the right man,” he answered.  “If I find him and bring him to the old red house this afternoon, so that Miss Redmond can identify him, will you have a sheriff ready to serve the warrant?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Very well, then, and thank you, sir,” said Chamberlain, moving toward the door.  “And I’m keen on hearing how you got even with Mr. Thayer on the Horace.”

The light behind the squire’s parchment face gleamed a moment.

“Come back, my boy, when you’ve done your duty by the law.  Every citizen should be a protector as well as a keeper of the law.  So come again; the latch-string is always out.”

It was mid-morning before the details connected with the sheriff were completed.  By this time Chamberlain’s heavy but sound temperament had lifted itself to its task, gaining momentum as the hours went by.  His next step was to search out the Frenchman.  The meager information obtained the day before was to the effect that the marooned yacht-owner had taken refuge in one of the shacks near the granite docks in the upper part of the village.  He had persuaded the caretaker of the Sailors’ Reading-room to lend him money with which to telegraph to New York, as the telegraph operator had refused to trust him.