Horace Dunstan, pausing in his excited walk in his library, stopped and stared in amazement when Tom came to one point of his strange recital.
“Ted said I gave him instructions to go with that crowd?” he demanded.
“He made that point extremely plain to me, sir,” Halstead insisted.
“But I—I never gave him any such instructions,” cried Mr. Dunstan, rumpling his hair.
“It seemed unbelievable, sir. And yet your son struck me as a truthful boy.”
“He is; he always was,” retorted the father. “Ted hated a lie or a liar, and yet this statement is wholly outside of the truth. I assure you——”
“If you’ll permit me, sir,” broke in the lawyer, who had been listening silently up to this point, “I’ll indicate one or two points at which young Halstead’s most remarkable——”
“Crane,” broke in the master of the house, with unlooked-for sternness, “if you’re about to throw any doubt around Tom Halstead’s story, I may as well tell you plainly that you’re going a little too far. Halstead has been most thoroughly vouched for to me. If you have any notion in your mind that he has been yarning to us, I beg you to let the idea remain in your mind. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hm!” said the lawyer, and subsided.
“Captain Halstead,” went on Ted’s father, “my son’s statement is so extraordinary that I don’t pretend to fathom it. But I give you my word, as a man of honor, that I am as much at sea in this matter as anyone could be. But I must get in touch with Wood’s Hole at once.”