"Is for murder in the first degree, growing out of the intentional sinking of the schooner. Captain Burns is the complainant."
"Thank you." She flashed one of her radiant smiles at him and made him a friend for life.
"That was a great race to-day," she remarked irrelevantly, but with enthusiasm. "How much did you beat the _Nettie B._, Code?"
"A half an hour," he replied, mystified at the turn of the conversation.
"Well, that _is_ a coincidence." She looked from one to the other. "It's exactly the same amount of time he beat you seven months ago when he raced the old _May_ against the _M. C. Burns_, isn't it?" Her glance shot to Nat.
"Why, I believe it is, Mrs. Mallaby," he stammered. The quick transition to that painful and dangerous period had caught him off his guard.
"That was a great race, too," she said cheerfully, "and it's too bad you never sailed the second one. Especially after you wanted to bet so much. You thought you would win the second race, didn't you, Nat?" She was sweetness itself.
"Why, yes, I thought so," he admitted guardedly. "But I don't see what all this has got to do--"
"Well, it hasn't very much," she said deprecatingly, "but I was just interested. What made you so sure you would win that second race that you tried to bet?"
"Oh, I don't know," he answered easily. "I just had confidence--"
"In what, Nat Burns? Your schooner had easily been beaten the first time and she was notoriously slower than the _May_. Every one in the island knows that you can't sail a vessel like Code Schofield can, and that you are afraid to carry sail. To-day proved it. Anybody with half an eye could see that that stays'l was cut with a knife and didn't blow off. All these things being so, what made you so sure that you would win that second race seven months ago?"
Nat looked at her steadily. His nervousness had gone, apparently, and he was his old crafty self once more.
"That is none of your business, Mrs. Mallaby," he said insolently. "And now if you'll let me pass I'll keep an engagement."
"Mr. Durkee," she said, "please keep Mr. Burns here until we have entirely finished."
"Yes, ma'am, I will," said the hypnotized man, and Nat, after a glare around upon the unsympathetic audience slumped down into a chair and smoked sullenly.