"Say, wasn't I th' old landlubber though!" he cried. "T' think I thought
I was really committin' a crime. Ha! Ha!"

"Well, your past experience had made you careful," Alice said.

"That's what it had, Miss. It's no fun t' be barred from the ports of
the country that has more of 'em than any nation of the world. It
hampers a man. But I daren't go on British soil."

"Could they come here and take you?" asked Ruth.

The old man looked around before replying.

"They maybe wouldn't know me," he hoarsely whispered. "I've grown a
beard since those days."

"Well, then, how would the British authorities know you?" asked Alice
with a smile.

"I'm not takin' any chances, Miss," was the answer. And though it might
seem to an outsider that it would be safe, under those circumstances,
for Jepson to visit British ports, if he kept away from the island where
he had been imprisoned, he could not see it that way.

"No sir!" he exclaimed. "No British ports for mine!"

By this time Mr. DeVere, who had been engaged in finishing a few scenes
in a play that had started the day before, came up to join his
daughters.