"Not I. For one thing, they're vallyble, and I don't keep a safe.
I put 'em back in the old man's—top shelf—alongside o' yours."
Cai groaned. "They're missin' then!"
"Who told you?"
"The child—Fancy Tabb."
'Bias looked serious. "Why didn' she come to me, I wonder?"
"I reckon—knowing what friends we'd been—she left it to me to break the news."
"I won't believe it," declared 'Bias slowly. But he sat staring straight at the horizon, and after each puff at the pipe Cai could hear him breathing hard.
"The child's not given to lyin'. And yet I don't see—Rogers bein' helpless to open the safe on his own account. At the worst 'tis a bad job for ye, 'Bias."
"Eh? . . . 'Means sellin' up an' startin' afresh: that's all—always supposin' there's jobs to be found, at our age. I don't know as there wouldn't be consolations. This here life ashore isn't all I fancied it."
Now Cai had in mind a great renunciation: but unfortunately he could not for the moment discover any way to broach it. He played to gain time, therefore, awaiting opportunity.