CHAPTER II. APPEARANCES.

 The unconscious illustration of Mr. Pierce’s theory was pacing backwards and forwards on the narrow space between the cuddy-roof and the gunwale, which custom dignifies with the name of deck. Six strides forward and turn. Six strides aft and turn. That was the extent of the beat. Yet had Peter been on sentry duty, he could not have continued it more regularly or persistently. If he were walking off his supper, as most of those seated aft would have suggested, the performance was not particularly interesting. The limit and rapidity of the walk resembled the tramp of a confined animal, exercising its last meal. But when one stands in front of the lion’s cage, and sees that restless and tireless stride, one cannot but wonder how much of it is due to the last shin-bone, and how much to the wild and powerful nature under the tawny skin. The question occurs because the nature and antecedents of the lion are known. For this same reason the yachters were a unit in agreeing that Stirling’s unceasing walk was merely a digestive promenade. The problem was whether they were right? Or whether, to apply Mr. Pierce’s formula, they merely imposed their own frame of mind in place of Stirling’s, and decided, since their sole reason for walking at the moment would be entirely hygienic, that he too must be striding from the same cause? 

 Dr. Holmes tells us that when James and Thomas converse there are really six talkers. First, James as James thinks he is, and Thomas as Thomas thinks he is. Second James as Thomas thinks him, and Thomas as James thinks him. Finally, there are James and Thomas as they really are. Since this is neither an autobiography nor an inspired story, the world’s view of Peter Stirling must be adopted without regard to its accuracy. And because this view was the sum of his past and personal, these elements must be computed before we can know on what the world based its conclusions concerning him. 

 His story was as ordinary and prosaic as Mr. and Mrs. Pierce seemed to think his character. Neither riches nor poverty had put a shaping hand to it. The only child of his widowed mother, he had lived in one of the smaller manufacturing cities of New England a life such as falls to most lads. Unquestionably he had been rather more shielded from several forms of temptation than had most of his playmates, for his mother’s isolation had made him not merely her son, but very largely her companion. In certain ways this had tended to make him more manly than the average fellow of his age, but in others it had retarded his development; 

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