Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/114

 besides, I thought you had to go back to your ship tomorrow."

"I can take the five o'clock train," said John. "That will get me to Boston by midnight. But I'll start right after breakfast as I always intended, and you'll come with me to see me off. And we'll simply stop off at Westchester to do the right thing and then you'll send back word from the city that I've persuaded you to make a voyage with me . . . It's to the Old World. You'd like that . . . We'll take a cargo of claret in Bordeaux and while it's loading we'll be able to run up to Paris for a day or two . . . When we come back if you find that you don't like the sea you can try something else. But it won't hurt you to give it a trial."

"Look here," said James, "I'm not going to marry that girl and I'm not going to sea with you. So what are you going to do about it?"

John's voice had been very kind and tolerant. But a stern note now leaped into it.

"What am I going to do about it?" he said. "Why, the best I know how—according to my lights."

And suddenly and once more in the region of the solar plexus he struck James a terrific blow.

This time James, who had not lost consciousness but thought that he had been killed, thrashed about on the ground like a newly landed salmon and