Captain Taber, lying waiting for the summons to the train, recognized the firm tap on the door announcing Mr. Stewart, and cried heartily, “Come in.” His friend entered, noting with satisfaction that C. B. was not present—he had gone to see about the baggage. So advancing to Captain Taber’s side he held out his hand and said—
“I’ve come to bid you good-bye, my friend, for you are practically at home, and urgent business calls me away. But before I go I want to ask you one or two things in confidence. We know one another pretty well now, and I feel I can trust you with my life if necessary. First my daughter has confessed to me that she’s in love with that noble chap who has nursed you all the way home. I sounded him on the subject carefully when I felt inclined to suspect him of having designs, as a money grubber like myself would, and he satisfied me that his soul was as white, his mind as pure of any intention of the kind as an angel’s might have been.
“Then, as you know, I took no further precautions to keep them apart, for I felt I could trust my girl, and I knew he was sound. But she has been in love with him all the time, and at last feeling she was going to lose him came to her old daddy. And her old daddy, who would die for her, can’t help her here. The man doesn’t seem to understand love as ordinary men understand it. That he’s got no money and doesn’t want any doesn’t matter to me a straw. I’ve got a good deal more than is good for me, and I know to my cost just how little happiness there is in a lot of money. Tell me, dear man, could you find out for me soon, and let me know whether you think he has any of the love for my daughter that a husband ought to have, and if it is his modesty holding him back?
“Then about yourself! I know you’ve been a man who has used all the energy and wit you’ve had to good purpose as far as you were able, and that it’s very probable that this disaster that has overtaken you has found you but poorly fixed to face what may be and I hope will be a long life, but of enforced leisure. Now I have often made more money in an hour than you have in all your life by the hardest of hard work, and I am going to ask you as an act of kindness to me to let me do an act of justice, that is to settle upon you a sufficient sum to keep you and your wife in decent comfort all your life.”
Captain Taber was about to speak, but Mr. Stewart raised his hand saying—
“Hold on a minute! what I am proposing is not, cannot be, at all derogatory to your independence. It shall be known to none but you, and alas, that I should have to say so, I cannot claim it as a virtue, for in the first place I shall not miss it from my bank account, and in the next it will give me more real pleasure than anything else in the world except seeing my daughter happy. Now then.”
Two big tears rolled quickly out of Captain Taber’s eyes and down his cheeks as he strove to speak. At last he said—
“Stewart, I would refuse if I could, but how can I? I’m a broken man and all I have been able to save, having been a fairly lucky whaleman too, is five thousand dollars. I have three youngsters, two boys and a girl, none old enough to begin the world, and I have been worried about the future. But Christmas taught me to pray and rest in the Lord, and since then I’ve been happier, feeling that He would see me through in His own way.”