"I'm half afraid I couldn't stay that long," said Appleby, and Niven turned to Holway, who had joined them.
"You're coming right along. Holway has seen the skipper, and he knows better than refuse—him—anything."
They drove through the dusky shadows of the pines all the afternoon, and when evening came they and Jordan sat down to a very choice dinner in the room where they last met. Jordan, however, seemed leaner and grimmer than he had done that night, and his hair was grey, but there was no mistaking the pleasure in his face when he greeted them. Niven made him sit down at the head of a little table by an open window.
"That's your place, sir," he said. "I don't quite know what they're bringing us to eat, but it's not going to be as good as the canned beef you gave us the night you came across us in the Champlain."
He smiled curiously as, glancing round at the glittering glass and silver and the sumptuous decorations of the great dining-room, he remembered the little, stuffy cabin of the schooner that swung with the seas. All this was very pleasant, but he felt he had lost something that could never be regained since then. Appleby seemed to understand, for he nodded.
"There's a difference, Chriss," he said. "We shall never be quite the same again."
"A man can't have quite everything—and you've got the dollars now," said Jordan with a little twinkle in his eyes. "Well, I've made my blunders, like most other folks, but the one I made that night was my biggest one. Still, it was a kind of curious story you told me."
Niven laughed. "I've no doubt I did it badly—but there are times when I wish I was only a lad sailing north again sealing, and I fancy I shouldn't be a partner in a good business now if it hadn't been for a few things that voyage taught me."
While he spoke the dinner was brought in, and for a while they postponed their questions. Then as they sat by the open window looking out across the blue inlet towards the climbing pines and the distant snow Jordan glanced at his cigar.
"I've only had a dinner of this kind once before in my life, and you know who it was gave it me then," he said. "Now, I've a notion Donegal believed you all along."