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Rh forehead by a red-hot flying burr. Its perfect resemblance to the call signals in old-fashioned hotel rooms had stamped on him quite as indelibly the nickname, "Pushbutton Pete."

"But yuh ain't a-takin' yer licker," he urged, edging towards Phil, who stood fascinated by that baleful mark of Cain.

Recovering, he accepted the flask, and gulped down a swallow or two with an attempted nonchalance, immediately belied by the spasmodic twitching of his throat, to the delight of the old man in the corner, a weazened old fellow, bent of back but strong in spite of seventy years' wandering the globe as cookee, cook, smuggler, pearl-thief, and general odd-job man of the seas.

"Hold 'er, sonny, hold 'er," he cried, slapping his knee, then chortled,—"Steward, bring yer bowl."

Philip turned on him disdainfully.

"I'm used to a gentleman's drink—not this shellac." "Ho ho," shrieked the old fellow, "the blankety son of a sea-cook calls hisself a gentleman!"

"Not so gay, old top, or you might get run out of town," Philip chided him, toploftily, as a lordly young sophomore a freshman for some breach of campus etiquette.

"That's it, Bub, lace it into him," encouraged Pushbutton Pete with a wink—and a stranger would have promptly conceived a very different figure for the situation.

Although the threat of banishment might have held a very real sting, for, as folks in Salthaven guessed, Old Man Veldmann repaired to his shack only for purpose of sanctuary, it seemed to afford him infinite amusement. His light-green