"Well, sir," said Tad, after a minute's reflection, "maybe, arter all, it won't be such a bad thing for me to go to France, considerin'—"
"Considerin' what, boy? Now then, make a clean breast of it and tell the truth."
"Considerin' as how the bobbies is arter me," replied Tad reluctantly.
The captain gave a low whistle, and a quick glance at the lad's downcast face, then he said:
"What are they after you for? What have you been and done?"
"Well sir—to tell the truth, there's several things I done, but the perlice ain't arter me for them. It's for the things I ain't done that they're arter me."
"It seems to me you must be clean off your head, child, to tell me such nonsense," remarked the skipper. "Now then, try and give me something I can believe."
So plucking up courage, and seeing real kindness in the fat skipper's face, Tad told his story, beginning with the home miseries and his longing to revenge himself on his stepmother; then his making off with his little half-brother, and the disappearance of the child with the gipsies; his subsequent adventures and escapes, his thefts and dodges and lies, and the misfortune that had followed him all the way through—all this Tad told without keeping back anything.
Jeremiah Jackson listened attentively, only interrupting the boy's narrative now and again to ask a question, if Tad's hesitating speech did not succeed in making his meaning clear.
But when the lad paused at last, adding only, "That's all, sir," the skipper said: