A sailor and afraid of the weather!" "Ha!" She raised her finger, and a smile of triumph played over her face, only to die away again into a blank look of disappointment.

"It is only papa," she murmured.
A shuffling step was heard in the hall, and a little peaky man, with his slippers very much down at the heels, came shambling into the room.

Mr.
McIntyre, sen., was pale and furtive-looking, with a thin straggling red beard shot with grey, and a sunken downcast face.

Ill-fortune and ill-health had both left their marks upon him.

Ten years before he had been one of the largest and richest gunmakers in Birmingham, but a long run of commercial bad luck had sapped his great fortune, and had finally driven him into the Bankruptcy Court.