"I am sure I should like to repay you for your bravery, Mr.—Mr.——" began Mrs. Holbrook, "but I hardly know how to thank you, sir."
"Mr. Jones is his name, ma'am," said Jubiter John, "an' youse kin repay him at once."
Mr. Jones looked somewhat abashed at this, and the stranger's look of defiance came into his eyes again.
"He's the sanctified man I ware tellin' the Cap'n of jest before he fell overboard," went on Jubiter, "an' all he wants is a passage down the coast a ways. The settlement is down near where I used to run."
"Ah, a clergyman,—a country clergyman, I see," said Mrs. Holbrook.
"I reckon that's about it," said Jubiter John.
"Mr. Jones," said Mrs. Holbrook, "I should be very glad, indeed, to aid you down the coast. You know the yacht is small and you might have to sleep in the Captain's stateroom. If you would not object to that arrangement, you are more than welcome to the voyage."
"Ah, madam," said the tall man, solemnly, in a small voice hardly above a whisper, "I should be glad to have the opportunities you speak of, and if the bed be rough an' hard an' the grub poor, I know it will be the hand o' Providence what makes it so, an' I kin stand it. The ways o' Providence air unbeknownst."
"Very well, then, we leave to-morrow morning at daylight. My husband will be back before sundown and you may come aboard to-night," said Mrs. Holbrook. "Won't you come aft? I am sure the walk must have tired you. It is a long way to the village."
The tall Mr. Jones glanced at Jubiter John and then followed the lady to the quarter-deck, where he folded up like a huge jack-knife in a deck chair, to listen to the somewhat vague but religious conversation of his new patron. He sat there for a full hour, seldom even answering questions which were put to him and not offering a single sentence of his own volition. When he arose to go, he looked askance at Mrs. Holbrook, then he raised his face heavenward and said, solemnly: "The ways o' Providence air unbeknownst."