we reach port, I should like you to do something for me. It's only
this: dispose of my body without--without the children knowing.
It has been in my mind to ask you this for some days. Captain,
those children know nothing of death."

Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.

"Little Emmeline's mother died when she was two. Her father--
my brother--died before she was born. Dicky never knew a
mother; she died giving him birth. My God, Captain, death has laid
a heavy hand on my family; can you wonder that I have hid his very
name from those two creatures that I love!"

"Ay, ay," said Le Farge, "it's sad! it's sad! "

"When I was quite a child," went on Lestrange, "a child no older
than Dicky, my nurse used to terrify me with tales about dead
people. I was told I'd go to hell when I died if I wasn't a good
child. I cannot tell you how much that has poisoned my life, for
the thoughts we think in childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the
thoughts we think when we are grown up. And can a diseased
father have healthy children?"

"I guess not."

"So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care,
that I would do all in my power to protect them from the terrors
of life--or rather, I should say, from the terror of death. I don't
know whether I have done right, but I have done it for the best.
They had a cat, and one day Dicky came in to me and said: `Father,