When my father had heard the story he said so little that he frightened me; and my mother and sister exchanged anxious glances.
"Of course," Roger added, "we are convinced absolutely, and if that fellow hadn't got away at Whampoa, we'd have proof of Kipping's part in it--"
"But he got away," my father interposed, "and I question if his word is good for much, in any event. Poor Joseph Whidden! We were boys together."
He shortly left the table, and a shadow seemed to have fallen over us. We ate in silence, and after supper Roger and my sister went into the garden together. What, I wondered, was to become of us now?
That night I dreamed of courts and judges and goodness knows what penalties of the law, and woke, and dreamed again, and slept uneasily until the unaccustomed sound of some one pounding on our street door waked me in the early morning.
After a time a servant answered the loudly repeated summons. Low voices followed, then I heard my father open his own door and go out into the hall.
"It is. I'm told you've two of my men here in hiding. Rout 'em out. What brand of discipline do you call this? All hands laying a-bed at four in the morning. I've been up all night. Called by messenger just as I turned in at that confounded tavern, charged full price for a night's lodging,--curse that skinflint Hodges!--and took a coach that brought me to Salem as fast as it could clip over the road. I'm too fat to straddle a horse. Come, where's Hamlin and that young scamp of yours?"
I scrambled out of bed and was dressing as fast as I could, when I heard Roger also in the hall.
"Aha! Here he is," Mr. Webster cried. "Fine sea-captain you are, you young mutineer, laying abed at cockcrow! Come, stir a leg there. I've been aboard ship this morning, after a ride that was like to shake my liver into my boots. Where's Ben Lathrop? Come, come, you fine-young-gentleman supercargo."
Crying, "Here I am," I pulled on my boots and joined the others in the lower hall, and the three of us, Mr. Webster, Roger, and I, hurried down the street in time to the old man's testy exclamations, which burst out fervently and often profanely whenever his lame foot struck the ground harder than usual. "Pirates--mutineers--young cubs--laying abed-- cockcrow--" and so on, until we were in a boat and out on the harbor, where the Island Princess towered above the morning mist.
