to arrange about the potatoes said they were going to send another two hundred tons for free distribution among those who hadn't money to buy any of the first lot. Every soul in the place knew that six weeks ago, and no man would be such a fool as to buy to-day what he'll get for nothing to-morrow."
Captain MacNab was the next visitor to the shed. He appeared to be in a very bad temper.
"Sir," he said, "I've come to tell you that unless you take those infernal potatoes out of my ship I'll dump the whole cargo of them into the sea. They've gone rotten, sir. They stink, stink so that the toughest man on board can't go below without puking. I might as well sleep in a sewer as my cabin.
Poor Mr. Nicholson-Croly succumbed to this last blow.
"I can't help it," he said, piteously. "God knows I wish the potatoes and the Government and Father Gibbons and Mr. Normanstill and the whole parish were all at the bottom of the sea together."
"Well," said the Captain, "I'll see that the potatoes get there anyhow. You can look after the drowning of the rest of the party yourself."
That night Mr. Nicholson-Croly was rowed on board in one of the ship's boats. Steam was got up after dark, and at about two o'clock in the morning, three miles from the shore, one hundred and ninety-four tons of exceedingly malodorous potatoes were shovelled into the Atlantic. At daylight the steamer was again at her old anchorage, where
