the West Indies for the ear of so experienced a sailor, and so keen an
observer as Captain Acton."

"Well, we may go with you some day, sir," said Captain Acton
good-humouredly, "but peace must be declared before I embark. We are
keeping Miss Acton waiting."

He led the way up the companion ladder.

Amongst those who just then were standing upon the quay-side gazing
with more or less of interest at the _Minorca_ and the other vessels
moored to the walls, was old Mr Greyquill, whose figure was immediately
conspicuous by reason of his long white hair and heavily white
thatched eyebrows. And this day he wore a round velvet cap such as
might have been suggested to him by a portrait by some old Flemish
artist, and a velvet coat. He stood on the wharf a few paces behind
some people who formed a little group, and peered at the _Minorca_ with
the sharp of his hand pressed against his brow seeking to determine the
faces he saw on board. He was too far off to recognise the Admiral and
Captain Acton, who now appeared, but the moment Mr Lawrence's head was
visible above the bulwark-rail he knew him, and seemed to try to catch
his eye, but Lawrence, who instantly perceived him, averted his gaze or
turned his back, and after steadily staring for some moments under the
shelter of his hand the old fellow shuffled off.

"Have you secured a berth, Miss?" asked the Admiral, with a hearty,
jolly smile.

"Mr Lawrence paints the voyage to the West Indies in very tempting
colours," answered Lucy.

"If Lucy and I should take the trip we should go in the _Aurora_," said
Captain Acton.

"You! At your time of life, brother, going a voyage to the West Indies
with every probability of the French making a prisoner of you and
Lucy!" cried Miss Acton in the high key in which she saluted the ear
when she was alarmed.

"My dear sister, we are going to do nothing of the sort. Not that
a voyage to the West Indies in such a vessel as the _Aurora_ would
be a fearful adventure or a terrible ordeal. Indeed I never look at
that little ship," said he, turning his eyes in the direction of the
schooner, "without a longing to be on her deck when she is fully
clothed, when the liberal breeze of the sea blows steadily, and when
bending under her white heights she springs like the flying fish from
one sparkling sea to another, cradled always by the rocking hand of the
swell."

"You should add papa's description to your list of the charms of a
West Indian voyage," said Lucy, with a slight glance at Mr Lawrence,
for, when a girl has been proposed to by a man and has refused him,
and when she is perfectly well aware that his passion remains as great
for her as ever it was, she will be coy, shy, cautious, something
unintelligible perhaps, in his presence.

"Upon my word, Acton," said the Admiral, "you have just put into words
the fancies I have had whilst I have been conversing with Miss Acton.
The old spirit will speak in a man, the old love will grow eloquent
once again at the suggestion that quickens it into bright memory: and
whilst I have been talking to you, I have in imagination paced the
starboard side of the quarterdeck, which we will call the weather side;
this harbour, these wharves, the Old Town have disappeared, and I am
surrounded by a wide ocean in the heart of which this little ship is
rushing, streaming her wake like a comet's tail, bursting the surge in
rainbow-like arches for her progress, filling the air with the music of
shroud and back-stay, and lightening the heart with a sense of freedom
which the sea alone can give, and which used to visit me like a sense
of gratitude or rejoicing as though something had been given to me that
was gracious, beautiful, and rare."

Mr Lawrence viewed his father with astonishment, Miss Lucy with a smile
whose beauty was radiant with applause, Miss Acton with an expression
of awe, whilst Captain Acton burst out: "Upon my word, Admiral, forgive
me for saying so, but I never could have believed such thinking so
expressed was in your line of mind. I believe St Vincent would be very
pleased did he possess your powers of delivery."

"Oh come, come!" cried the Admiral, "don't make me feel more ashamed of
myself than I am. But, Miss Lucy, is not the sea a subject about which
you cannot think without being inspired with thoughts high above those
which visit you from other topics?"

"When such a man as Nelson is in your mind."

"Yes, Nelson is the great sea-poem of the age," said Captain Acton,
"and I find more melody in the thunder of his guns than in the
prettiest turns of the poetic measure. Are you going home, sister?"

"Yes, we have done all we came out to do. Where is Mr Eagle? Mr
Lawrence, you will not forget to give him the sulphur for his poor
feet?"

"I will not, madam, and I trust that the application of it may make him
a little better humoured."

"One might notice a man's ill-temper," said the Admiral, "if he were
over you; but when he is under you--there used to be a saying in my
day--it's in the power of an officer to ride down any man under him."

"I believe Mr Eagle is a very respectable man, though illiterate like
most of them in the lower walks of the Merchant Service," said Captain
Acton. "This sort of people come on board through the hawse pipe, but
at a pinch their knowledge which is uncommonly practical, is sometimes
vastly useful. They are acquainted with manoeuvres which would often
put their betters to their trumps. They know all about rigging, its
straining point, have little tricks above the average seamanship for
heavy weather, are learned in the pumps and their gear, and indeed know
ships not only with the familiarity of a master-rigger, but of a master
builder. One of these men I believe is Eagle, and I think, sir, you
will find him all that I tell you he is, though like most of his class
he is of a somewhat sour and sullen nature, and quick to grumble. I'll
go home with you, sister. Admiral, can we give you a lift?"

"No, I thank you, sir. I am to dine to-day with Mr Perry. I have long
promised to eat a cut of cold meat with him. His cider is the best I
know. His cider alone makes him worth dining with."

"Give Perry my kind regards," said Captain Acton.

"And thank him," twittered Miss Acton, "for the beautiful sermon he
gave us last Sunday, and tell him I am looking forward to such another
next Sunday."

This said, they all went over the side, the Admiral taking great care
of Miss Acton as she crossed the planks. Mr Lawrence remained in the
gangway. When on the wharf his father called to him.

"Where do you dine, Walter?"

"At 'The Swan,' sir."

"I have a few words to say to my son," said the Admiral. "I will bid
you good-bye here," and with the ceremonious courtesy of that age, he
took leave of Captain Acton and the ladies, who proceeded to their
carriage, where they were cordially welcomed by the passionate barking
of the pug and the terrier.

Mr Lawrence's eye reposed upon Lucy's figure whilst his father was
bidding the party farewell, whilst she walked away on Captain Acton's
right, Aunt Caroline strutting and leaning with some affectation on
her crutch-cane on his left, the three much saluted by the people who
lingered on the wharf, as they went. The young fellow's eyes still
reposed upon the girl even as the Admiral came stumping across the
planks pounding them with his staff as he walked.

"Well," said he, "I suppose you kept your appointment this morning with
Captain Acton."

"Oh, certainly, and his reception was all that I could have expected at
his hands."

"Are the terms pretty satisfactory?"

"Twelve pounds a month, and ten per cent. commission on the freight."

"On the freight?"

"On the money earned by the carriage of cargo, sir."

"I understand," said the Admiral. "This should prove a very good
offer--very good terms. What will this ship carry?"

Mr Lawrence reflected as though mentally gauging depth of hold and
breadth of beam, and answered, "I think when flush she should hold six
hundred tons."

"Six hundred tons out and six hundred home. That is twelve hundred.
I don't know what freights are, but they must rule high, and, kindly
creature as he is, Acton is the man to know to what market to drive his
pigs. I think you have done very well; besides obtaining occupation
which may conduct you to something higher or at least better, you stand
to clear about a hundred pounds by this voyage----"

"The value of its wages, sir, will depend upon its length," interrupted
Mr Lawrence.

"I know that," cried the Admiral. "But whatever the sum, it is good
money and honestly earned, made not as you could make it in this place,
and better a hundred pounds gained by toil which a man's conscience
approves and applauds, than one hundred thousand fetched from the
pockets of others by the crime of gambling."

He looked steadily at his son whose eyes were fixed upon the carriage
which the Actons were at that moment entering.

"Did you observe Mr Greyquill," continued the Admiral, "on the wharf
behind a little crowd of people viewing the ship under his lifted hand?
He was there when you came on deck."

"I saw him."

"What brings that old man here peering and mopping and mowing? Has he
heard of your appointment? I wish he may not be hatching some scheme,
planning some design to end this, your fortunate command, by arresting
you unless you pay him up in full."

"I don't know what his intentions are," said Mr Lawrence with some
blood colouring his face. "I saw the old rascal plain enough, but
avoided his eye as I feared he might have the insolence to step aboard
and address me in the presence of Captain Acton and the ladies, and
yourself, sir. But if he has heard of my appointment I cannot conceive
that he meditates my arrest as an alternative to my paying him in full,
which he knows I cannot do. I should tell him that by waiting he will
receive payment by instalments. This I can manage now that I have money
coming to me. Will he stop his sole chance of receiving back his loan
by clapping me into gaol?"

"Why, perhaps not," answered the Admiral. "He would be a fool as well
as a villain for so doing. Take an opportunity of putting the matter
to him as you put it to me. I do not want to see your chance obstructed
nor Captain Acton's kindness embarrassed by any action on the part of
old Greyquill. And I beg, sir," continued the old officer speaking
slowly and solemnly, "that during the rest of your time ashore you will
behave with that discretion which can alone secure you the continuance
of Captain Acton's goodwill. You are going to dine at 'The Swan'? I am
sure you will understand what must signify a report that you were not
master of yourself, for," continued the old Admiral with emphasis, "it
is idle to believe that the best natured man in the world will confide
his property and the care of valuable lives to the custody of a man who
is not fit to take charge of himself."

"You may trust me," said Mr Lawrence, making Sir William so low a bow
that it might have been thought that they were strangers, and had met
on an affair of ceremony.

The young man watched his father roll away towards the steps which
conducted him on to the bridge. His face was sunk in thought, a
peculiar gloom was in the expression of it. His beauty even in repose
always had something of sternness in it: now as he watched his father's
diminishing figure his mouth gradually put on an air of bitter
hardness, and a frown gave severity and even the light of anger to his
eyes.

He was lingering on board until the hour when the ordinary at "The
Swan" was served, and whilst he stood looking over the rail near the
gangway, so profoundly self-abstracted that his eyes, turning idly,
seemed without speculation, Mr Eagle came across the planks. He limped
a little, and the expression of his face was uncommonly acid with pain
and the nature of the man.

"Oh," said Mr Lawrence, waking up, "here is a packet left by Miss Acton
for you for your feet." He handed him the sulphur.

"I am much obliged I am sure," said Eagle. He put it to his nose. "I
have tried it again and again," he said, "and it ain't of no more use
than if you was to rub in snuff. But she's a kindly lady to remember
me," said he, putting the packet into his pocket. "And I hope, sir, as
when you meet her you'll present her with my humble acknowledgments."

Mr Lawrence gave him a nod and then turned his head away, not desirous
of further converse with a man he regarded as inferior to a boatswain's
mate or master-at-arms upon a man-of-war.

Eagle was on board to see to the arrival of cargo which came into Old
Harbour very leisurely in waggon-loads at a time. The _Minorca_ was
now receiving commodities for the passage out, but she did not sail
till the 3rd of May, and was not yet more than half full up.

Mr Lawrence looked at the clock which was affixed to the house at the
end of the wharf in which Captain Acton had his offices, and was about
to leave the ship to make his way to "The Swan," when a man who had
been standing a few moments on the quay side at the foot of the gangway
boards, stepped across and saluted him.

Mr Lawrence exclaimed: "Oh, it's you! What do you want?"

The man was almost a caricature owing to malformation and other
deformities. His red hair flamed; he was hunched, his arms were as long
as a baboon's and seemed designed for climbing. His legs were arched
and at the same time crooked at the knees, so that he appeared to be
stooping whether he walked or stood, and to complete the suggestion
of his origin he had a trick of scratching himself like a monkey. He
was about twenty-five years of age. Whose son he was he could not have
told. He preeminently belonged to the parish.

Lawrence had got to know of his existence by one day sauntering
into the justice's court. Among the prisoners charged with various
misdemeanours was this man, who had no other name than Paul. He was
accused of having taken a vegetable, a cabbage or a turnip, from
a field which lay invitingly open, and the punishment inflicted
was a fine or a term of imprisonment. Mr Lawrence, struck by the
extraordinary appearance of the man, or witnessing a very great
hardship in a pauper having to pay for so mean a thing as a turnip by a
considerable term of incarceration, put his hand in his pocket with a
sailor's liberality, and finding the money that was wanted, handed the
amount to an official of the court, and the man went free.

The man waited outside for Mr Lawrence. When he appeared he seized
his hand, and fell upon his crooked knees and kissed and slobbered
his hand, and blubbered, with tears trickling down his face, "that
so help him his good God, come what might he would do anything, no
matter what, to serve his honour, he would die for his honour; let his
honour command him to jump into the river then and there and drown
himself, he'd do it if only to please him." His gestures whilst on
his knees, his extraordinary grimaces, the strange, wild terms in
which he expressed his pathetic gratitude for this condescension of a
gentleman in taking notice of, and rescuing from gaol a poor, pitiful
vagabond, a child of the parish, a no man's son, nor woman's either,
a creature who lived he could not tell how, sometimes by stealing
a raw vegetable, sometimes by running an errand, sometimes by the
bounty of a tradesman who might fling him a crust, or of some drunken
fisherman who might toss him a shilling to sing him a song and dance
as he sang, a performance so hideously uncouth that Hogarth would have
immortalised it could he have witnessed it; his gratitude, in short,
was so diverting, at the same time moving in its appeal to pity, that
Mr Lawrence could scarcely forbear a laugh, and indeed did laugh when
he got rid of the fellow and walked away.

"I understand that your honour's got command of this ship," answered
Paul.

"Well!" exclaimed Mr Lawrence, eyeing him with that sort of regard with
which one views some hairy, human-like importation of the likeness of a
man, and perhaps better looking than some men, from an Indian or South
American forest.

"If your honour hasn't shipped a steward, sir, I should be mighty glad
if you'd take me. I could sail round the world with you, sir. I'd love
to be your shadder. Wherever your honour goes, I'd like to be there."

The strange face of the fellow with its red eyebrows and red eyelashes,
and red fluff upon his upper lip, and compressed nose, ape-like or
sheep-like, so that the nostrils seemed to be squeezed out of position,
and to gape from either side, quivered with feeling, with intensity,
and passion of desire.

Mr Lawrence, with a ridiculing smile, said: "What do you know about
waiting on people in the cabins of ships?"

"What I did should be to your honour's satisfaction. I could lay a
cloth and set a dish, and I'd learn in as many hours as much as it
would take others days."

"But you were never at sea. You'll be sick in your hammock, and I shall
be wanting some one to wait upon me."

"Oh yes, your honour, I've been to sea," answered Paul with prodigious
earnestness. "I've been in smacks. I've knocked about all my life in
boats belonging to this Harbour. Sick! No fear, your honour. I'll sarve
you for nothing."

Mr Lawrence looked at the red-headed, monkey-faced, pleading creature,
not, in that look designing, it was manifest, to give him the berth;
but all on a sudden his face slightly changed, an idea seemed to flash
up in him and work in his countenance, just as a light kindled suddenly
within a mask made of something transparent might, by the intention of
the artist, change its look.

"What's your name again?" he said.

"Paul, your honour," answered the fellow, brightening instinctively
with the face Mr Lawrence now viewed him with.

"No other name?--no matter; Paul will do very well for the books."

He mused a little with his eyes fastened upon the ship's decks. For a
space he was deeply sunk in thought. Presently his eyes rose to the
figure before him, and he examined him as curiously as though he had
never before seen him.

"Be here," said he, "on Saturday next. It may be that I'll give you the
berth. No more words. Off with you!"

The fellow made a dash with his hand at a red forelock, and in his
crooked gait went through the gangway and walked away up to the wharf,
just as Mr Eagle rose out of the main-hatch.

Mr Lawrence walked to "The Swan." The entrance was under a covered way
into which the stage coach drove for baiting. Mr Lawrence walked into
the bar and observed a letter fixed in a frame of red tape stretched
across a board covered with green baize. As he was in the habit of
receiving letters at this house he looked at this one and saw that
it was addressed to him. He pulled it out of its mesh of tape, and
addressing a middle-aged, comely woman who sat in the window in the
bar where she supplied lookers-in with pots of frothing beer, or
directed them to such parts of the house as they desired to visit, he
asked when that letter had been left, and was answered that the letter
carrier had brought it in about two hours before.

He seemed to know the handwriting on the envelope, and there was a
frown upon his face as he broke the big seal. He read it where he
stood. It was a letter from a Captain Rousby informing him that he owed
him the sum of one hundred guineas, that this money as a debt of honour
had been payable immediately on proof of the loss of the wager, but
that so far from having received it, Captain Rousby had been waiting
for nine months without obtaining further satisfaction than the now
wearisome and well-worn excuse that Mr Lawrence could not immediately
pay, that he was expecting to obtain employment in the course of the
month which would enable him to discharge this debt with interest
if Captain Rousby thought proper. The Captain informed Mr Lawrence
that last week Mrs Rousby had presented him with twins, a catastrophe
which greatly increased his expenses at a time when he was without
employment, and when money was never more urgently needed. Captain
Rousby then went on to inform Mr Lawrence that if a portion of this
debt, say twenty-five guineas, was not sent to him by the first of
June, it would be his unpleasant duty to visit Old Harbour Town, call
upon Sir William Lawrence and state the facts of the case to him as an
officer and a gentleman. If he could obtain no satisfaction from the
Admiral, it would be his painful duty--a duty that must be singularly
distasteful to a man who had been a messmate and shipmate of Mr
Lawrence--to take such steps as his lawyer might advise.

When Mr Lawrence had read this letter through, he was in the act
of crushing it by one of those spasmodic motions of the hand which
accompany a sudden violent gust of wrath, he met the eyes of the
female in the bar fixed upon him; in her gloomy beer-flavoured recess,
faintly luminous with hanging rows of highly-polished drinking pots,
and a sideboard well within laden with metal vessels for drinking from
and for holding drink, the landlady of "The Swan," for such was this
decoration of the bar, had manifestly been studying his face whilst he
read. She knew him very well, and she was also well acquainted with
his habits. In a breath on meeting her eyes he changed his resolution,
and folded up the letter into its original creases, giving her a smile
which did not seem in the least degree forced, and saying to her in
his pleasantest manner, "Is the ordinary on?" and receiving her answer
after she had darted a look at an invisible clock in her room, "In
another three minutes, sir," he passed on and went upstairs.

The ordinary was held in a long room next to the room in which the
seafaring men congregated. As a meal it was renowned in the district.
Coarse it might have been called, coarse and plentiful, but it was of
that sort of coarseness which makes very good eating. Mr Short, the
landlord, was a liberal caterer, and he excelled in choice of rounds of
beef, in joints of venison, in legs of pork and mutton, in fine dishes
of veal; and this ordinary was always graced with a precedent dish of
fish, which was invariably fresh from the sea, and whether turbot, cod,
bake, soles, and many flat fish which the smacks brought with them into
Old Harbour, were delicious in freshness and flavour. Short's cheeses,
too, were always very fine, dry, crumbly, flakey, nutty, and without
being too strong they flavoured the bread or the biscuit with what the
palate knew to be real cheese. His cellars held a very fine old port,
but it was seldom asked for unless some person of distinction and
importance occupied a seat at that teeming and appetising board. Short
brewed his own beer, and a delicate amber draught it was; there was no
better beer brewed in England.

This ordinary was held every day, for there were always people passing
through Old Harbour Town, and then Old Harbour Town itself was liberal
with its own supply of guests, pilots, smack-owners and others who
found it cheaper and much more convenient to get a cut at "The Swan,"
than to sit down to an ill-killed and ill-cooked joint, or a fried chop
or steak in their own homes. The ordinary was frequently graced by
the presence of distinguished people. A lord would occasionally take
a chair; several neighbouring squires were regular frequenters when
business brought them into those parts. Captain Acton had often made a
meal at that table, and so had Sir William.

Mr Short occupied the head of the table, and the oldest frequenter
who happened to be present the foot. Mr Short took his seat when Mr
Lawrence sat down, and all the people who had come to eat were then
assembled. In a picture they would figure as a homely old English lot:
men in bottle-green coats, in red coats, in purple waistcoats, in plain
pilot cloth, here and there a dandy built up in the latest style, here
and there an old fogey who stuck to the fashion of the last century
and figured in a little tye wig, a frill very fit for the harbouring of
snuff, a cut-away coat with immense pockets, such as Boswell might have
been found drunk in, in Edinburgh, and shoes with buckles.

Mr Short said grace, and prayed for the King and Royal Family, and
for the utter ruin and confusion of the French, Spanish, and all our
enemies. In two or three places the walls were adorned by maps, with
which no navigator of this age would dare to risk his life fifty miles
out of sight of land. A spinet stood in a corner; it was sometimes
customary when the ordinary was ended and the sentiments had been
brought to a conclusion for any one who could perform, to sit down to
this spinet and accompany any gentleman who was good enough to oblige.
But it was always understood that the song must carry a chorus which
everybody present knew so that everybody present might join in it,
hence the same old melodies were very often heard in that long room
with the low ceiling, and its clock whose voice was audible all over
the house at night.

Mr Lawrence was a quality guest, and being a frequenter, had a place of
his own, which was on the left hand of the landlord; thus he got the
fish of his choice, the cut of meat he liked best, the best draught of
ale the house could supply, and this ordinary was too useful to him to
allow him to be in debt to it.

Short was a large fat man with a pink face, merry little drunken
eyes almost buried out of sight in hairy eyebrows and eyelashes; his
pear-shaped nose was so purple at the end that it might have been
supposed he had just been fighting his way through a hedge full of
nettles. He treated his patrons as guests, and of those he knew, would
ask familiarly after their relations, and how their businesses went and
the like.

Mr Lawrence sat very silent, yet ate with appetite because what was put
before him he relished, but it was observed that he limited himself to
one tankard of beer. When the ordinary was ended, pipes were put upon
the table, and jars of tobacco, and then Mr Short, without rising,
exclaimed:

"Gentlemen! before I give you a sentiment I shall be pleased if you
will allow me to propose a toast. It was only known to me this morning
that my highly respectable friend on the left, Mr Lawrence, the son
of that distinguished officer, Rear-Admiral Sir William Lawrence, has
received, through his friend Captain Acton of His Majesty's Navy,
the command of that beautiful barque, the _Minorca_. I am sure that
there is ne'er a gent here who takes an interest in our Old Harbour,
and who has the honour of the acquaintance of Captain Acton and
Mr Lawrence, but will feel proud and delighted that that beautiful
ship, the _Minorca_, which we all claim now as belonging to our town,
will be commanded by as fine an officer as ever walked His Majesty's
quarterdeck. Gentlemen all, I give you the health of Captain Acton, Mr
Lawrence, and the _Minorca_, and may prosperity attend the beautiful
ship, and may she return home to gladden the eyes of all well-wishers
of our grand old town by loading our store-houses with more foreign
produce."

Mr Lawrence looked startled when this toast was begun; but he composed
his face as Short proceeded, and when everybody was extending his glass
to him and wishing him all the good-luck that Short desired, he was
receiving the general salutation with a composed smile and an air of
courteous appreciation.

One sat at the table who peered at him hard when Mr Short began. This
was a middle-aged man in a brown wig. He was one of the two clerks kept
by Mr Greyquill, and regularly dined at "The Swan's" ordinary, a repast
which had never once been decorated by the presence of Mr Greyquill,
who, living in rooms over his offices, chose to eat for his breakfast
a little fish which he bought from a man with a barrow with whom he
haggled, and for his dinner a cutlet or a piece of steak, just enough
for one, with vegetables, and for supper whatever might have been left
from breakfast or dinner, and if nothing was left, then a piece of
"hearty bread and cheese," as he would term it, and a glass of beer.

The man with the brown wig peered with his head on one side at Mr
Lawrence, as though Mr Short's toast conveyed a piece of news to him.

When the landlord had made an end, and the healths named had been
pledged, Mr Short, filling a pipe and inviting those of his friends who
were smokers to follow his example, asked old Mr Sturgeon, a well-known
smack owner, for a sentiment, who in a feeble voice, and eyes from
which the light of being had almost been extinguished by time, broke
out in a sort of hiccough: "As we ascend the hill of life may we never
meet a friend."

This was enough for Mr Lawrence, who perfectly understood that all
the sentiments which were likely to be delivered at that table he had
heard over and over again. He rose, made a bow to the landlord and the
company, and walked from the room to the adjacent room, which was made
a reading-room of by the pilots, smacksmen, and others, and sitting
down at the long table, took a sheet of some paper which was there
for the accommodation of the frequenters, and after thinking deeply,
undisturbed by the sound of singing which started next door, he began
to write in pencil, obviously making a draft of a communication he
proposed to copy there, or more probably elsewhere.

Certainly what he wrote about did not refer to the letter he had
received on his arrival at "The Swan." This may be assumed, as he never
referred to that letter which lay in his pocket. He wrote leisurely
and with absorption, never heeding the noise next door, and when he
was done he carefully read through what he had written, and with his
handsome face stern with the quality of resolution and the temper which
enters into great or violent undertakings as their impulse or seminal
principle, he pocketed the letter, and left the room by another door.

CHAPTER VI

THE LETTER

Mr Greyquill's office was in High Street. He used two rooms for his
professional affairs, and the rest of the house, which was a small one,
he lived in. He was an attorney, and a flourishing one: so mean that
his name had passed into a proverb, but honourable in his dishonourable
doings, so that though every man agreed that Greyquill was a scoundrel,
all held that he kept well within the lines of his villainy, and that
he was unimpeachable outside the prescribed and understood rules of his
roguery.

Two mornings following the day on which Mr Short had proposed Mr
Lawrence's health, old Mr Greyquill rose from his chair at his office
table, and said to his clerk in the brown wig, who sat within eyeshot
at another table in the adjacent room, that he was going to collect his
rents at Greyquill's Buildings, and that he would not be back before
half-past twelve. He never looked so white as he did this morning. His
white hair seemed to rest like a cloud upon his head and shoulders. His
eyebrows bore so strong a resemblance to white mice that no one could
have overlooked the similitude, particularly as each eyebrow flourished
over the bridge of the nose a few little dark hairs which resembled
tails. His waistcoat was white, not having come from the wash above
three days, and his stockings were white.

He left his house and walked down the road which led to the bridge, but
instead of crossing the bridge he descended a short flight of steps
abreast of the flight that led to the wharves. These steps conducted
the passenger to the river-side walk that went up the banks of the
stream, and a very sweet walk it was this morning. The bright river
trembled in prisms and gems under the pleasant breathing of the wind,
which was aromatic with the odours it culled in its flight over the
country, the birds sang gaily with here and there a deep flute-like
note. It was a morning lovely and delightful with the virginal spirit
of spring, when all creation seems new, when no note in the trees, no
sweetness in the air, no bloom or flash of white on the bough, no timid
wayside flower that seems to have sprung into being since yester eve
and glances at you coyly from its little wayside bower, but delights
the senses as a beautiful surprise, as a something remembered but never
so fresh, so appealing.

A bend of the river's path shut out the view of Old Harbour Town and
the Harbour, and just when Mr Greyquill reached this turn, he saw
Mr Lawrence coming along the road, having manifestly gained it by a
little bridge, some distance beyond which was another way, but rather
roundabout, of getting to Old Harbour from Sir William Lawrence's
cottage.

Mr Lawrence looked very well; his colour was fresh, his eyes carried
the light which nature intended them to take, but which his hand was
perpetually seeking to extinguish by draughts of strong liquors. He
had been extremely temperate for three days, and his resolution was
producing its fruits in his general appearance. It is indeed surprising
how short is the period asked for by Nature even from men who live
harder and drink harder than Mr Lawrence, to restore to them as much
of their healthy old good looks as in some cases makes them almost
irrecognisable.

"Good morning, Mr Lawrence," said Mr Greyquill, making the gentleman
a low bow. "I may take it that you're going to the ship which I am
pleased to hear Captain Acton has given you the command of."

"You are very kind, sir, to take an interest in my affairs," answered
Mr Lawrence with slight sarcasm.

"I think I have some reason, Mr Lawrence," answered Mr Greyquill,
drooping his head to one side, and looking at the other with a
confidential and familiar expression which was scarcely a smile, but
which teased the hot blood of Mr Lawrence as though the look masked an
insult. Mr Lawrence viewed him in silence.

"I may trust, at all events," continued the money-lender, "now that you
are in receipt of money--and if the terms have been correctly named to
me they speak very highly in favour of Captain Acton's generosity--that
you will give my debt your immediate attention, and that if you cannot
pay all, you will pay as much as I have a right to expect from the
amount you receive."

"You shall be paid, sir," said Mr Lawrence.

"It would be convenient to me if you would fix a day for the first
payment if you cannot pay the whole," said Mr Greyquill.

"I shall not be able to pay you anything this side my first command of
the _Minorca_. If I hand you the sum of twenty-five guineas after my
return, that is, when I am paid off by Captain Acton, I believe you
will not have much reason to complain, sir."

Mr Greyquill shrugged his shoulders.

"Twenty-five guineas is a very small proportion of three hundred
pounds," he exclaimed.

"It is not three hundred pounds, sir," answered Mr Lawrence, with the
countenance of a man who is resolved in his intention, but desires to
speak with prudence and good humour.

"But from my point of view it is three hundred pounds," cried Mr
Greyquill. "What is the good of money without interest? I enter in my
books the interest on my money as a part of my money, and if you tell
me I am not to speak of my interest when I speak of what is due to me,
what is my situation? How am I to live? The profit the butcher makes by
the sale of his carcasses is the interest upon his outlay; deprive him
of that and he will not sell you meat, because he could not afford to
do so."

"The butcher does not charge at your rate, Mr Greyquill," said Mr
Lawrence with a faint smile.

"I will not declare what the butcher charges!" cried Mr Greyquill,
a little warmly for so sleek a man. "But take my word, the British
tradesman, whether tinker, tailor, butcher, baker, and we'll throw in
grocer as we do not value rhymes, charges at rates which if reduced
from profit to interest and called by that aggressive term discount,
would represent every shopkeeper in the nation as big a scoundrel as
the most voracious of your money-lenders, sir."

He bowed as though to the applause of an audience, and looked the
better pleased with Mr Lawrence for having heard him.

"Well, Mr Greyquill, twenty-five guineas when I'm paid off on my return
home. I can say no more, and can promise no more."

"You speak like a gentleman to me in this matter, which you do not
often do when I refer to it, nor your father neither----"

"Sir William Lawrence has nothing to do with my affairs."

"Still, he might recognise my claim and your debt, and treat me perhaps
with the commiseration with which he would pity himself if he lost
three hundred pounds."

"You have not lost it, Mr Greyquill."

"No, sir, and from my conversation with you this morning I am satisfied
I shall receive every penny. I wish you a truly prosperous voyage and a
safe return home, and that the Frenchman won't be the means of dishing
more hopes than your own."

He made another of his bows, and Mr Lawrence saluting him with a
slight smile and a lifted hat, passed on.

Just at the bend of the road not ten paces from where they had been
standing, Mr Lawrence drew forth his pocket-handkerchief to blow his
nose, and with it there came out of his pocket and fell upon the road
unobserved by him, a large sheet of paper folded into four. Mr Lawrence
blew his nose and went round the corner, and the paper would have been
out of sight had he looked behind.

Old Greyquill, trudging on busy in thought with Mr Lawrence's debt,
was moved by some idea of the man to look behind him. Mr Lawrence had
disappeared. Quite discernible from where Greyquill stood was the
sheet of paper Lawrence had let fall. Old Greyquill stopped, peered,
reflected that it might be a letter that he himself had unconsciously
been toying with and had dropped, or that in some other way had let
fall from his pocket. He retraced the few steps that lay between and
picked it up, and proceeded with it in one hand, whilst with the other
he fumbled for his spectacle-case.

He immediately saw that it was a sheet of paper about the size of
foolscap, but somewhat squarer, of a bluish tint; it was provided
free of cost to the frequenters of the sailors' reading-room at "The
Swan." He well knew the paper, for many a letter written upon it had
he received. It was of a convenient size for those who used it, as
first of all it was ruled on one side, which enabled a man to steer
a straight course with his pen. The page was likewise so large as to
enable a man to write big, and few who used it could write small. It
also supplied plenty of space for erasures, whether of expression or
spelling, and this was useful. When folded into four and sealed or
wafered, the sheet became a letter which needed but the address to
qualify it for the post.

In the case of the sheet Mr Greyquill held, it had been folded to
resemble a letter, but it had not been made one; it bore no address,
and the communication started at once without the prefatorial "Dear
sir," or the like, and it closed without signature or initials. But
Mr Greyquill immediately saw that the handwriting in pencil was
Mr Lawrence's, and that the document must have fallen from that
gentleman's pocket just now when they parted.

We have seen that the frame which bounded Mr Greyquill's portrait of
honour was large. Most men recognising the handwriting would have
denied themselves the right of reading this letter, because they had
found it lying in a public roadway, for two reasons: the handwriting
was known to them, and the recent presence of the writer where that
letter was found would have identified it as its owner's business in no
wise to be intruded on by a man of honour.

But this sort of argument did not fall within the frame of Mr
Greyquill's picture of integrity. It was a letter lying ready for
anybody's hand in a public way; next, it was not addressed; third, it
was not signed; and fourth, though the contents were apparently in
Mr Lawrence's handwriting, yet some people did write, as Greyquill
knew, so wonderfully alike that there was no reason to conclude
without strong internal evidence that the letter Mr Greyquill held was
written by Mr Lawrence. Whatever else it was, it was certainly a draft
roughly pencilled of a letter that had been copied in ink and no doubt
despatched. Here and there was an erasure in ink, which proved that it
had been copied in ink and corrected in certain places by the pen that
was transcribing it. He had not proceeded far when his eyebrows, which,
as we have heard, inimitably expressed the aspect of two white mice,
arched their backs to an extraordinary degree as though in imitation of
a cat when enraged; his mouth took on the posture of a whistle; with
his eyes rooted to the sheet he stopped and scratched his head until
he nearly tumbled his hat into the road.

Just then certain large white-bosomed April clouds which had been
leisurely sailing up from over the sea began to discharge some rain,
and one shower was so smart that Greyquill took refuge in a small
wayside barn, where, until the rain ceased he had the opportunity of
reading the letter several times.

His astonishment was unaffected and amazing; with the habit of senility
he kept on muttering to himself aloud whilst he perused and re-perused
the letter.

"Is it possible! Is this the officer and the gentleman! Could an egg
so full of criminal matter find any black fowl willing to hatch it
in so pleasing a nest! And I am called an old scamp because I part
with my honestly earned money for a consideration which is trifling
in comparison with the benefit I confer, the help that I am to the
man in need. This will require thought. I shall need to think pretty
considerably before I decide. Meanwhile, Mr Lawrence, I wish you a
prosperous voyage, and I wonder what you will do when you find out that
you have mislaid this letter, a copy of which to somebody or other, as
pretty a scoundrel as yourself no doubt, you have unquestionably by
this time posted?"

Meanwhile, Mr Lawrence walked towards his ship. He should have been on
the whole well satisfied with his meeting with Mr Greyquill. Perhaps
the profound indifference which in reality possessed him as to the old
scrivener's willingness to accept twenty-five guineas, or, in short,
anything as an instalment, was because he had long felt that the old
man never durst take extreme action. Greyquill knew that Mr Lawrence
was very popular in his own particular way in Old Harbour Town and the
neighbourhood. He drank and treated, and in a high degree possessed
the liberality of the sailor. The townspeople were proud of him, not
only because he was a handsome and finely built man, but because he had
shone in many deeds of gallantry whilst in the Navy, and everybody was
agreed that when Mr Lawrence was court-martialled the Service lost as
fine and plucky a seaman as was ever afloat, and one to be recalled to
his duties with apologies and without delay.

Admiral Sir William Lawrence was also highly respected, and people
spoke with pride of his living in their neighbourhood. It was likewise
well known that Mr Lawrence was a friend of the Actons, and in a small
town of small gossips the idea if not the circumstance of Mr Lawrence
having offered for the hand of the beautiful Miss Acton was not likely
to be neglected or overlooked, and to do the gossips justice, they
imputed the rejection of the handsome and dashing young Naval officer
to his loose habits.

Mr Lawrence well judged that if Greyquill locked him up for debt Old
Harbour Town would rise against him. His windows would certainly be
broken, his person might go in danger, for there was more than one who
had suffered at the hands of Greyquill who would be grateful for any
sort of excuse to administer a sound cudgelling to the old man, and
take his chance of the law, fortified by the conviction that if it came
to a fine the amount would be subscribed several times over.

Mr Lawrence's business on board the _Minorca_ did not keep him long. He
was primarily there to see to the arrangements of his own cabin, and
also of another cabin aft which it was his design to convert into a
sick-bay. This end was chiefly accomplished in this cabin by the rough
construction of a couple of bunks.

Just before he left the ship, the young fellow Paul, whom he had told
to come down on Saturday, stepped from the fore part of the ship where
he had been watching two or three men caulking, and gave Mr Lawrence
his usual salute of a pluck at a forelock and a scrape of a hinder
foot.

"Yes," said Mr Lawrence, running his eyes over him, "the articles are
opened at Mr Acton's offices. Go and tell the manager--but here----" He
pulled out a card upon whose face was some printed address, and with a
pencil struck out the address, and wrote to the effect that the bearer
called Paul had been engaged by Mr Lawrence as his cabin servant. These
lines he initialed, and giving the card to the youth, bade him present
it at the offices before one o'clock, or he would find them closed.

"Have you no better clothes than what you wear?" he said.

"No, sir."

"You may give an order for a suit of decent apparel fit to wait at
table with, for I want you to understand that your duties may bring you
to wait upon ladies and gentlemen, though you know nothing about that.
Do you hear?"

"Ay, your honour," answered the fellow with a grin decidedly above a
clown's intelligence.

"You can pay for the clothes on your return, or by drawing an advance
which Mr Acton's manager will let you have. Do you know Miss Acton?"

"The lady that lives at Old Harbour House along with Capt'n Acton?"
answered Paul.

"I mean Captain Acton's daughter."

"I should think I do, sir," answered Paul, grinning.

"You know her well enough, for example," said Mr Lawrence, critically
surveying him as though he took counsel within himself whilst he
talked, "that if I gave you a letter for her and for none other"--he
frowned, and with some passion emphasised _none other_--"you are not
likely to mistake, you are not likely to give it to another."

"I couldn't mistake, your honour. I know the lady as I know you, and if
so be as I did mistake, then I hope your honour would blow my brains
out, for I shouldn't leave your side till your honour did."

Mr Lawrence, with a nod and an expression of face that was scarcely a
smile, quitted the ship, and on the wharf found Mr Eagle, who had as a
matter of fact for a minute or two been watching him.

"That young fellow came aboard not long ago," said the mate, "and I
asked him his business. He replied that he was to be cabin servant by
your choosing. I was nigh telling him he was a liar, for I couldn't
suppose that the likes of him and his rags would suit a gent as has
sarved the King, and been waited upon, as I understand they do in the
Sarvice, by Marines."

Lawrence smiled, and answered: "The Marines may not be all you think
them, Mr Eagle, though they are a noble fighting corps. I took a pity
upon that young fellow. I once helped him out of a difficulty, and his
gratitude rose to the height of a dog's, which, as you know, is very
superior to man's. His ugliness interests me as the sort of beauty you
find in the toad or the snake or other things which make ladies scream.
He can bring dishes aft as well as another, and will look a very pretty
young man in a new suit of clothes. I may not be down to the ship again
till Monday. Good morning, sir."

He walked away, leaving Mr Eagle staring apace, and as he was going
over the side, Paul, who was coming down, received a very acid,
watchman-like look from the mate.

Mr Lawrence pursued the same road home by which he had gained Old
Harbour. In all probability had Mr Greyquill not looked back, the
young gentleman would have found his letter where he had unconsciously
dropped it. That side of the bridge--the up-river water path--was much
unfrequented, save on a Sunday, when lovers walked along it, and now
and again a little family dressed in their best. It was many chances
to one that the two or three who had passed along that path since Mr
Lawrence and Mr Greyquill had stood in conversation upon it, would
have picked up the letter or even taken notice of it, so very remote
from their ideas of things worth stopping for and examining on the
highway was a folded sheet of paper.

Mr Lawrence walked on. He thought of old Greyquill when he passed the
place where he had stopped to talk. He crossed the quaint old bridge
duplicated in the river, which streamed with becalmed surface up
here and mirrored with the precision of a looking-glass the hues and
shapes of every bird that swept the glassy surface for an insect, and
gaining a rich lane formed by seven or eight hundred years of growth,
for a monastery had stood here and a knight had had his manor where
now the land was without relic of stone or brick; but the vegetation
left by these people flourished, and though not above half a mile in
length that lane formed one of the most glorious, soothing, enfolding,
impulse-creating walks in all that country-side which abounded in
little paradisaical reaches of a like kind; I say Mr Lawrence crossed
the bridge, and emerging from the lane struck the high-road, and
presently gained his father's cottage.

Even in three days the weather had worked a miracle in the increase
of the beauty of the orchards in which the Admiral sat pipe in mouth,
tankard at elbow, embowered; a sort of figure who when at his window
would have greatly puzzled the Knight of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_;
for what should such a shape secretly ambushed in a spot fit only for
the dancing tread of the fairy, or the gaping stare of the ogre who
tries to see how the land lies by peering through two apple boughs,
what should such a shape signify, briefly arresting the clouds of
smoke which rose from his lips by vain efforts to extinguish by
copious draughts from his tankard the magical fires that blazed in its
interior? Whether the Knight would have tilted at the figure or pricked
his horse into headlong flight is a conjecture that must be left to
those who have read the poem and know the man.

The Admiral just now happened to be at dinner. A shoulder of mutton
and onion sauce with potatoes roasted with the shoulder and such other
vegetables as the season yielded was a dish fit to set before a king,
and the monarch who turned up his nose at such a dainty should be made
to banquet on nothing but the fare they give kings upon the stage.
Indeed, Sir William would tell his friends he knew for a fact that a
shoulder of mutton was the favourite dish of His Royal Highness Prince
William. If it was objected that the joint yielded more bone than meat
he had his answer:

"Sir, I once said to a sailor who had obtained a berth ashore on
sixteen shillings a week, 'How do you manage to rear your family? How
many are there of you?' 'Why,' he answered, 'there's me and the old
woman and four youngsters and grandfather!' 'You never see meat, of
course,' said I. 'Oh yes, we do,' he answered. 'Meat!' I cried, 'on
sixteen shillings a week and seven people to support, four of them
hungry youngsters!' 'Well,' he answered, 'I doos it in this way. On
Saturday I goes to the butcher and buys a shoulder o' mutton; on Sunday
we 'as it 'ot; on Monday we 'as it cold; on Toosday we 'ave what's left
of the cold; on Wednesday what's left of the cold we 'ave made into
ishee-ashee; on Thursday we makes what's left of the ishee-ashee into
ashee-ishee; on Friday we does without; and on Saturday I goes to the
butcher and I buys another shoulder of mutton.' Now," the Admiral would
say with his face warm with triumph, "name me any joint but a shoulder
of mutton that will supply what kept this family in meat, or the like
of meat, from Sunday to Thursday?"

The Admiral made his son welcome with unusual warmth.

"I never tasted a finer flavoured piece of mutton. This jelly, too,
lifts it to the dignity of a haunch. Those spring cabbages are very
tender. We do not eat nearly enough vegetables in this country. What
purifies the blood like a well-cooked spring cabbage that melts in the
mouth? I am in hopes that we shall get a very good show of potatoes.
Are you fresh from the ship?"

He asked this question with much importance. Indeed, during the last
two days he had manifested great interest in all that concerned the
Merchant Service; had found out, for instance, and avowed the fact to
Captain Acton, that our Colonial Empire was founded by British Merchant
seamen who, in the employ of merchant adventurers, sailed into all
parts of the globe and established settlements, and often fought for
the preservation if not for the conquest of principalities over which
the King's flag now waved. He also pointed to the Honourable East
India Company, and asked if our own or any Navy were superior in their
capacity and splendour to those ships, and whether our Navy treated
their officers with so much consideration, liberality, and prudent
foresight for each man's well-being.

"Yes, I have come straight from the _Minorca_."

"Will you complete your lading by the date announced for your sailing?"

"I think so--I hope so. I am very well disposed towards that scheme I
have put into being--the construction of a sick-bay. Every ship should
have a sick-bay. You must agree with me, sir."

"Wherever room can be found a sick-bay is most important," answered the
Admiral.

"A man falls sick of small-pox. What are you to do with him? You can't
cure him, and you can't heave him overboard. But because one falls ill
it surely does not follow that the others should go sick. Besides, we
carry no surgeon, which was an additional incentive to my suggesting a
sick-bay to Captain Acton."

"Oh, you have done well. Acton will value your foresight. A sick-bay is
a valuable detail in a ship's catalogue."

They talked of this and of other matters connected with the _Minorca_,
and then the Admiral went to the window to fill his pipe, and Mr
Lawrence to his bedroom.

Some thought whilst eating with his father had occurred to him, and he
felt in his pocket for the copy of the letter which he had drawn out
with his pocket-handkerchief and which Mr Greyquill had got possession
of. The handkerchief was there, but the letter was not. When he had
drawn out his handkerchief and felt and found the lining of his pocket
bare, when, in short, he completely understood that the letter was not
where it ought to be and where he knew it should be, he turned as pale
as the muslin curtain that partly veiled his window, started with an
abrupt swagger of motion as though he had been struck violently behind,
then with the energy of madness felt in all his pockets, pulling out
everything, meanwhile gazing around the room with eyes which seemed on
fire with their vigour of scrutiny and passion of fear.

He endeavoured to recollect himself that, by calming his terrors his
memory might better serve him. Urgent alarms often induce vain hopes
which we should laugh at in the cool mood. He believed he might have
put that letter down in his bedroom, and perfectly well knowing that
he had not done so, and yet coaxed by a will-o'-the-wisp hope, he
ransacked the room as though he knew that in it was to be found a gold
piece of value whose discovery demanded a careful search only. What
was certain in his mind was that that letter was in his pocket when he
walked that morning to visit the _Minorca_. He remembered withdrawing
it from his pocket, but in what part of the walk he knew not, and
re-perusing a portion of it to refresh his memory. He tried to find
comfort in the recollection that the letter bore no address and no
signature. But a thundercloud of horror came down on this feeble streak
of sunshine when he recalled the damning, incriminating contents of
that sheet which he had scrawled in pencil at "The Swan Inn." Whoever
found it would know that Mr Lawrence, and Mr Lawrence alone, had
written it, and this, too, irrespective of the handwriting.

But here he found another little hope; some squalls of wet, one
very heavy, had set the kennels running shortly after he had met Mr
Greyquill, and if that letter had lain exposed to those three or
four deluges, it not only stood to be changed into a mere rag to the
eye which none would dream of even glancing at, but the writing must
have been washed out to a degree to render the sense of the letter
unintelligible. He considered that it was not above two or three hours
when that letter was in his pocket, and that it must have fallen
somewhere betwixt his father's house and the _Minorca_ in that time,
for he had taken the same road to and fro. He reflected that that road
was but little used compared with the lane that led to the bridge
where the Actons' carriage had stopped. Understanding as a sailor the
preciousness of time, and conceiving that if the letter had by some
strange mischance fallen during his walk unobserved by him it might
still rest in the spot where it had dropped, insomuch that chance--for
the fellow was a gambler at heart--might concede him yet an hour,
even two hours, in which to find it, he put on his hat and marched
out of the house, just saying to his father in the window that he
had an appointment and should miss it if he didn't hasten, and then
stepped out, casting as he went to right and left of his path eyes as
piercingly scrutinising as those which the madman darts when he seeks
for the philosopher's stone.

It is needless, of course, to say that this searching walk was in vain.
Whatever lay white in his road he rushed at, and in his gizzard he
cursed the vast number of pieces of white paper which did somehow, as
though distributed by innumerable malicious Greyquills, attract his eye
and retard his progress whilst he turned them over.

On his way this side the bridge he met an old man with a stick who
stopped in his lame walk to turn about any little heap his eye met.
This old man was attended by a dog, who smelt at what the man touched.

"Have you seen a letter," cried Mr Lawrence, "a broad piece of paper
folded into four lying in the road?"

"Seen a what, your Anner?"

"Where are you from?"

"From Oozles."

Mr Lawrence repeated his first question.

"I don't know what you mean," said the old man.

Mr Lawrence easily perceived that he didn't, and went on his way
always hunting with his eyes. Past the bridge he met another old man,
a peasant with silver hair, fit, dressed as he was, to walk upon any
stage, and immediately take part in any performance that included
a peasant, a foster-child, and a baron. This white hair gave him a
reverend look, and his legs were strangely bandaged round about, and
his smock was a gown in which he could have preached a sermon without
exciting much suspicion as to the propriety of his dress.

"Have you seen a letter folded in four lying in the road?" shouted Mr
Lawrence.

"I'm a little 'ard of 'earing," was the answer, and the picturesque old
man put his hand to his ear shellwise.

Mr Lawrence went close to him and shouted.

"Gard bless your worship," said the old man in a sweet voice and a face
beautiful with the touches of the pencil of time upon a countenance
originally open, gracious, and good, "I ha'nt received a letter since
her last from my poor old woife, and that 'ull be twenty year ago, as I
know by the laying of the foundation stone----" Mr Lawrence broke away,
and asked no more questions during the rest of his walk.

He saw no letter--nothing like it. He went on board the _Minorca_, and
seeing the mate at the main-hatch, asked in an off-hand way if a copy
of a letter had been found in the cabin, or any other part of the ship
that morning.

"No, sir."

And there was an end. With wrath in his heart, and cursing himself
again and again as a barnyard idiot fit for spread eagling only to
carry such a missive as that about with him when its miscarriage might
prove his destruction, might even now be working it, he stepped on to
the wharf and came across Paul.

"Here!" said he.

The youth approached.

"I have lost a letter this morning," said Mr Lawrence, explaining
its form and size, "and it must have fallen from my pocket somewhere
between my father's house and this ship by way of Old Friar's Road. If
you can bring me that letter, or find out if it has been found, and if
so, by whom, before we sail, you shall have five pounds."

"Simply a letter, your honour, folded into four, without address,
written in pencil, and not sealed?" said the hunchback.

"That's it!" exclaimed Mr Lawrence.

"I'll do my best, sir, and I'll work from dawn to night to find it, if
it's to be found," was the answer.

CHAPTER VII

WHERE IS THE _MINORCA_?

Mr Lawrence was for a few days very uneasy, but uneasy is a mild term
to express the state of a man's mind that starts at a look or an
exclamation, who fancies he is whispered about when two go past him
talking, who expects that every man who approaches him is going to
speak to him about the letter he has found, who imagines that every
look that his father fastens upon him is a prelude to a tremendous
attack, who is willing to attribute the silence of Captain Acton to the
consideration of what steps in the face of such an enormity should be
taken by him against the son of his old friend Sir William Lawrence.

But Lucy Acton smiled and curtsied when he passed as usual. Old
Miss Acton was nervously polite in her way in her little chirrupy
salutations. Captain Acton was sometimes down at the ship, but had
nothing to say about the finding of a letter good or bad.

Therefore after a few days of miserable anxiety, during which he was
remarkable for sobriety and for conspicuous regard to his personal
apparel, Mr Lawrence allowed the subject of the letter to slip from his
mind, satisfied that it had been reduced to pulp by the wet that had
fallen on the morning he lost it, or that it had been blown by some
sportive stroke of breeze into a corner, or a place where it was as
much lost as if it had dropped from his pocket into the ocean.

As evidence that Mr Lawrence was improving in general esteem, a
brief conversation passed at Old Harbour House on the fourth evening
following the day of the loss of the letter. Captain Acton had invited
some friends to a rubber of whist. Sir William Lawrence was to be
amongst the guests, but as he lived near he was always late, explaining
that the fact of his living near excused him for taking plenty of time.
Miss Lucy was lovely in black muslin spangled with stars as the hair is
dusted with gold.

Whilst they waited for Sir William the conversation turned upon his son.

"How greatly Mr Lawrence has improved, not indeed in manners, for he
was always a very fine gentleman, a very pretty gentleman, but in
appearance, since you gave him the command of the _Minorca_, Captain
Acton."

This was said by Lady Larmont, the widow of an East India Director,
who had achieved a reputation for beneficence in the district without
spending very much money.

"What I much admire in Mr Lawrence," said Miss Acton, "is his art in
making a leg on entering a room. His art in this way rises to a degree
that is very unusual in men nowadays, and I should think particularly
in sea-faring men. His deportment embraces the whole room. A man has a
right to claim some sort of excellence who can make a leg with skill."

"'Tis a very old-fashioned term, madam," said General Groves, "current
in my time, but I question if much understood in this."

"It is most happily explained in the play of the _Man of the World_,"
said Miss Acton. "I was never more pleased than by Sir Pertinax
Macsycophant's reply to his nephew's question how he had made his way
in the world. Sir Pertinax replies, 'By booing, sir.' A great deal of
money and fine social positions have been obtained by booing."

"Hence the value of being able to make a leg in your opinion, madam,"
said General Groves.

"If trousers come in legs must go out," said Lucy. "What is the good
of being able to make a leg with elegance if fashion compels you to
conceal the eloquent member?"

"Well said, Miss, well said!" cried Miss Proudfoot, who was a very good
hand at whist and very quarrelsome over the game.

"I don't believe myself," said Miss Acton, "that trousers ever will
come in. Men whose calves are of a good shape and who have long been in
the habit of admiring and cherishing them, will be very reluctant to
conceal them in those ridiculous unmanly garments called trousers."

"As the majority of men strut this petty earth on drum-sticks," said
General Groves. "I expect that in a few years hence the universal male
wear will be trousers."

He looked at his own legs. Time had somewhat shrunk them.

"Mr Lawrence has wonderfully improved of late," said Miss Proudfoot,
with a glance at Lucy. "I should say that when in the Navy he was one
of the handsomest men in that glorious Service."

"All praise of him is gratifying to me for his father's sake," said
Captain Acton, whilst Lucy sat in silence with the shadow of a smile
lurking about her mouth, but invisible in her soft, dreamy half-veiled
eyes.

"Would not you like to take a trip to the West Indies in your father's
ship, Miss?" said the Reverend James Prettyman, who had been
headmaster at a fashionable school for young gentlemen for many years
past in a city about twenty miles distant from Old Harbour Town.

"Only the other day," replied Lucy, "I told Mr Eagle, the mate of the
vessel, that I could not imagine a pleasanter trip than a voyage to the
West Indies in the _Minorca_, but I stipulated that the sea should be
always smooth."

"There it is!" said Miss Acton. "Give me a sea as smooth as our lawn,
and I will accompany you, my dear."

Here Mr Pierpoint, who held some influential position in connection
with Old Harbour and was one of Captain Acton's frequent guests at his
whist tables, exclaimed: "The master of the _Aurora_ told me, a day
or two ago, that Mr Lawrence was attempting a wonderful innovation in
Merchant ships by the introduction of a sick-bay, after the custom of
men-o'-war."

"It is true, sir," said Captain Acton, "and Mr Lawrence loses nothing
in my esteem by his idea and application of it. The Merchants care
nothing about their sick. 'A sick man is no man's dog,' I believe, is
one of their adages. Every vessel, supposing her to be above a certain
tonnage, whether flying a pennant or not, should have quarters properly
fitted for the reception and treatment of the sick among her crew."

"I should think so indeed, poor men!" exclaimed Miss Acton.

"Suppose she carries no surgeon?" said Mr Pierpoint.

"Her master should be able to dispense physic with the aid of a book,"
said Captain Acton. "Besides, the idea is to isolate the sufferers from
the rest of the crew in the black, wet, slush-lighted holes in which
Merchant sailors are forced to live in dozens, breathing the aroma of
their own breath, and creating such an atmosphere that the wicked halo
of miasma gleams a corpse-light round the flickering, stinking flame
which hovers at the mouth of the spout of the lamp."

"What an awful picture!" cried Miss Proudfoot.

"Who'd be a sailor in the Merchant Service!" exclaimed General Groves.

"It is a noble life," said Lucy. "But it must be nobly lived."

"Oh, madam, I thank you," exclaimed Mr Prettyman. "To live nobly you
need pure air to begin with. But it certainly does young Mr Lawrence
great credit to be the first, as I apprehend from this conversation, to
introduce sick quarters for sick men on board Merchant ships. I doubt
even if the East India Company's vessels are fitted with such humane
receptacles."

"And yet Nelson," said Lady Larmont, "liked the Merchant Service so
well that he was reluctant to leave it to enter the Royal Navy. When he
came from his West India voyage in a Merchant ship his favourite saying
was, 'Aft the more honour. Forward the better man.'"

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the bustling
entrance of Admiral Sir William Lawrence, when of course the
conversation was immediately changed from the subject of his son and
sick-bays to other matters.

The _Minorca_ was announced to sail on Tuesday, 3rd May, at half-past
twelve o'clock. All her people without exception lived in or near Old
Harbour Town, consequently her crew was quickly assembled. On the day
previous they had bent all sails, rove all running rigging, done all
that was necessary to render a ship fit for the sea. She lay between
two other vessels, but was readily distinguished, not only by her rig
but by the height her masts towered above those of the others.

It had been arranged between Captain Acton and Admiral Lawrence that
the latter should breakfast at half-past nine with Captain Acton, who
would then fill an hour with transaction of certain business which he
could deal with in his own house, leaving the Admiral to amuse himself
in the grounds with his pipe, and, if he chose, a telescope; after
which they would walk leisurely down to Old Harbour, go on board the
_Minorca_, and take a farewell view of the vessel with a God-speed to
her new commander.

Lucy over-night had said she would join them, but she did not appear
at the breakfast table. Her father enquired for her, and was told that
she had left the house an hour earlier, or perhaps more, to take the
morning air and a walk with her dog.

Neither Captain Acton nor Miss Acton witnessed anything strange in
the absence of Lucy from the breakfast table. She was in the habit of
taking these early walks, and would often turn into a cottage whose
inmates she well knew and breakfast with the occupants, enjoying more
the egg warm from the nest, the home-cured rasher of bacon, the pot
of home-made jam, the slice of brown bread and sweet butter, the bowl
of new milk, or the cup of tea which on such grand occasions would be
introduced by her humble friends, than the choicest dainties which her
father's cook could send to the breakfast table at Old Harbour House.

"I expect you will find her down at the wharves waiting for the ship to
sail," said Miss Acton. "I met Mrs Jellybottle yesterday. She told me
that Farmer Jellybottle had received on the previous day a large parcel
of very substantial eatables from his brother, who is head gardener at
Lord Lancaster's. Lucy has possibly been tempted by the display."

"Here is her dog anyhow!" exclaimed the Admiral, as the little animal
marched into the room and stood near Lucy's chair with fore-foot lifted
as though she awaited her mistress.

"How sits the wind?" enquired Captain Acton, who being used to his
daughter's occasional absence took no particular interest in her
failure that morning to attend the breakfast table.

"I believe," said the Admiral, casting his eyes at the window, "that
it blows a pretty little off-shore breeze from the north. The sea is
rippled by it into a dark blue, and your ship will sail into it with
almost square yards."

"No ship of mine departs without my heart accompanying her," said
Captain Acton. "I believe I am bound to go in one of them to the West
Indies some day or other, but not whilst there's an enemy's cruiser to
be met with in the circle of the horizon."

"I suppose, sir," said Miss Acton to the Admiral, "that there is no
further news of the descent of the French."

"Plenty of news, madam," answered the Admiral, "but most of the reports
are lies born of fear. The French never can get a footing upon this
land."

This led to a brief argument between Captain Acton and Sir William,
who was making a prodigious breakfast off a large crab, which he
affirmed was much more delicate eating than the lobster, as the shrimp
is sweeter than the prawn, though people whom the actor Quin loved
to deride were of a different opinion. He had begun with crab, and
was now ploughing heartily through a dish of eggs and bacon, with a
view to letting go his anchor in some savoury sausages. Captain Acton
fed capriciously, as a man who thinks of his digestion more than his
appetite.

After breakfast the Captain went to his library to transact certain
business with a lawyer and one or two others, Miss Acton to the
housekeeper's room, there to receive certain poor people, and Sir
William Lawrence, filling his pipe, waited in the grounds until Captain
Acton should appear, and diverted himself as best he could with
conversation with the gardeners and in admiring the springing flowers.

He came from the kitchen garden and was standing in the middle of the
lawn, where he obtained a view of the sea betwixt the bluff on which
stood the windmill and the other bluff on which stood the lighthouse.
He sent his gaze in the direction of Old Harbour. It was a heedless
gaze. He took no particular note. Alongside the wharves a number of
small vessels were moored. They somewhat crowded the eye with their
rigging and spars. The brig-of-war lay in her accustomed place off the
pier. Apparently it was not Lieutenant Tupman's intention to put to sea
that day.

All of a sudden the Admiral's gaze, that was somewhat heedless--that
of a man who takes in a general prospect without regard to
particulars--grew intent: his eyes were fixed on Old Harbour. In a
minute they grew more than intent: astonishment dilated them, and they
were not without the sparkle of alarm. He rubbed his eyes, and removing
his pipe from his lips strained his gaze once more at the shipping in
the Harbour.

"Good God!" he ejaculated, "where is she?"

Only a little bit of sea lay within his sight; that which he had seen
ran in blue ripples between the points of cliff which framed the
entrance to Old Harbour. Though the scene was distant, his sight, for
a man of advanced age, was fairly good, and even all that distance off,
he could without much difficulty distinguish the fine lines of the
_Aurora's_ masts bearing their trucks high above the spars and rigging
of the vessels abaft and ahead of her.

He walked to a bed of flowers at which an under-gardener was at work,
and said to the man: "Have you good eyes?"

"I can see a good bit, your honour."

"Do you know the _Minorca_?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Could you distinguish her if she's in the Harbour at this distance?"

"Why, sartinly, your honour," answered the man, looking at the Admiral.

"Then tell me if you see her," and the Admiral watched him with such an
expression of face as he might have looked with at a falling barometer
in seas distinguished for cyclones and typhoons.

The gardener gazed and gazed, and his intent regard crumpled his brow,
for he seemed ambitious to be able to say he could see the ship. After
a considerable pause, during a portion of which the man sheltered his
eyes with his hand, he exclaimed: "If the _Minorca's_ a three-masted
vessel, square rigged forward, and fore-and-aft rigged on the
mizzen-mast, then all that I can say is, your honour, she ain't among
that shipping down there."

Without speech the Admiral walked away swiftly on the stout staff he
was used to carry, striking the sward with it till you witnessed the
energy of his thoughts with each blow, and, entering the hall of Old
Harbour House, took down from its brackets a very handsome, and for
those times, powerful telescope with which he returned to the place he
had left, where he might obtain the best view of the Harbour that was
to be got from the grounds of the mansion.

He levelled the tubes at the shipping, but witnessed no signs of the
_Minorca_. He was amazed. The glass sank in his hand, and he rubbed
his naked eye and fastened it again upon the Harbour. The vessel was
to sail at half-past twelve, and it was now about a quarter past ten,
and the _Minorca_ was gone. The old gentleman took aim with his glass
at the little breadth of sea that was in sight, in a hopeless way
conceiving that a sail, invisible to his bare vision, might leap into
the lenses out of the distant blue recess, and proclaim herself to his
nautical eye as the ship that was gone. Nothing was in sight.

He stood musing. It was, as we have seen, about a quarter past ten.
Captain Acton would not have completed his business until something
after eleven. Should the Admiral invade him with the announcement of
this strange disappearance of his ship? He considered the matter a
little, and concluded that it must be impossible but that, although
Captain Acton had been silent on the subject at the breakfast table, he
must know the business of his ship, and that it was understood between
him and Mr Lawrence that if the wind served, or anything unforeseen
befell, or if Mr Lawrence in his judgment chose to sail before the time
announced, he was at liberty to let go his fasts and blow into the open
at any hour he pleased. Thus it struck the old man, though secretly he
did not regard his own reasoning as sagacious.

Nevertheless he determined to await Captain Acton's arrival from the
business which was holding him in his library; so he lighted his pipe
afresh with his singular little pistol-shaped pipe-lighter and struck
about the grounds with his staff, blowing great clouds out of the depth
of his meditation, and often heaving a sailor's blessing at the two
points of cliff which interrupted the view of the sea to east and west
of the coast.

It was a few minutes past eleven when Captain Acton came out of the
house talking to Miss Acton, who was followed by her own and Lucy's
dog.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Admiral!" exclaimed Captain
Acton.

"Why, sir," answered the Admiral, "I don't see that we should be late
if we did not go at all."

"I don't quite understand," said Captain Acton, gazing with friendly
interest at the jolly, round, weather-dyed face of Sir William, whose
looks certainly at this moment did not wear the jocund complexion they
were used to carry.

"Your telescope is in the hall, sir," said the Admiral. "But your sight
is very good. I presume that you are aware that your ship has left her
berth, and is not in the Harbour."

"Not in the Harbour!" cried Miss Acton. "Good gracious, has she sunk,
do you think?"

Captain Acton sent a swift and searching glance at the shipping in the
distance. He then with quick steps fetched his glass. By his movements
and countenance the Admiral immediately perceived that he did not know
his ship had sailed. He pointed the telescope at the shipping. The
_Minorca_ was certainly not one of them. The river flowed bare from the
sea under its bridges to its inland recesses, and offered no creek nor
shelter to the eye for a vessel of any tonnage. If the barque was not
in the Harbour, she had put to sea. Both observers on the lawn were
sailors, and did not need to be told this.

"If your son has sailed," said Captain Acton, with a face charged with
perplexity, doubt, irritation, and astonishment, "he had no authority
to do so. What has caused him to take this step? Surely as a sailor who
has served the State, he, before all masters in the Merchant Service,
ought to understand the meaning of the word of command."

Sir William's countenance resembled the expression that probably
decorated Captain Marryat's Port Admiral when he was told in no
uncompromising language, "You be damned!"

"And where, pray, is Lucy?" said Miss Acton, in a voice querulous with
alarm and other feelings, for Miss Acton was one of those old ladies
who are always praising Providence for its blessings, but who are very
willing to find calamity in trifles. "She is a long time gone. Who
says that she breakfasted with the Jellybottles? And at what time did
she leave the house? And if Mamie went with her why is she here?" she
added, turning her eyes upon the little terrier.

The hall door was wide open; a footman was crossing the hall. Captain
Acton called to him.

"What time this morning did Miss Lucy leave the house?"

"I don't know, sir. I'll ascertain, sir," and the man disappeared.

"The _Minorca not_ in the Harbour!" exclaimed Miss Acton, staring
at the cluster of rigs, beyond which rose the breadth of narrow sea
shining in a blue tremble to its horizon. "No accident could have
happened or you would have heard, brother."

"Miss Lucy went out at about half-past seven, sir," said the footman.

"Come, Admiral, we will walk to the Harbour and enquire into this
matter," said Captain Acton, who was somewhat pale and looked extremely
disconcerted.

"But where is Lucy?" cried Miss Acton.

"Send the people about and make enquiries," answered Captain Acton.
"She is making calls. It is the _Minorca_ that has disappeared."

"But what a dreadful responsibility to leave upon my shoulders," said
Miss Acton. "Suppose those I send about come back and say she is not to
be found? It is more than I can bear. The charge is too awful! What am
I to do if she is not to be found?"

"But she is to be found," cried Captain Acton, surveying his sister
with a quarterdeck severity of look. "What do you think? That Lucy has
run away with the ship? She has breakfasted somewhere and is gossiping
somewhere else. I leave you to make enquiries, sister. The area to be
covered is not wide. She will be telling you where she has been before
we return. Come, Sir William, this is the most extraordinary thing that
has happened to me in my time!"

The two gentlemen set out at a vigorous pace, leaving the poor old
lady overwhelmed, motionless, and gaping with the alarm raised in
her by this enormous obligation of discovering whether her niece had
breakfasted with the Jellybottles or with other folks, where she was,
and why she had not returned since half-past seven that morning.

All the conversation of the two officers consisted of idle speculations
as to the cause of the _Minorca_ having sailed some hours before the
time announced for her departure. It was clearly necessary that Mr
Lawrence should have much business to do before he could quit his
moorings, and that if the ship had sailed as early as the Captain
and the Admiral suspected, her captain had completed all necessary
arrangements on the previous day. For first the loading of the vessel
was to be fully completed, and all the necessary papers and documents
to be on board, the clearance or transire from the Customs duly
obtained, and the master furnished with copies of the charter party or
memorandum of charter party and of the policies of insurance on both
ship and goods.

"I saw Mr Lawrence on several occasions yesterday," exclaimed Captain
Acton, "and he did not suggest by a syllable that he was making ready
to sail early this morning before the various officials he would have
to see were aboard."

The Admiral struck his staff strongly upon the earth and stopped to
look through a break in the hedge in the lane or road which they were
descending, at Old Harbour: the Captain stopped too; they stared amain.

"But he must have had some object!" cried the old Admiral, whose face
was strongly flushed with heat and conflicting passions. "We shall very
shortly find out what that object is, and I shall feel very greatly
astonished if it does not satisfy you, sir, as well as myself."

They resumed their walk. When they had reached the bridge they found
old Mr Greyquill, leaning over the rail, and gazing with intentness,
with a sort of lifting leer which could not be defined as a smile,
though it was like the shadow of one, in the direction of Old Harbour.
This person was not used to address either of the gentlemen on meeting
them in the public streets. They were accustomed to nod in silence. But
this morning as the Admiral and the Captain passed him, the Admiral
so close as to brush his coat-tail, the old scrivener turned with a
rapid motion and exclaimed, still preserving his singular leer: "I
beg pardon, gentlemen, but as I fail to see the _Minorca_ amongst the
ships, may I enquire if she has sailed?"

"That, sir, is the errand which is carrying us to the wharves,"
answered the Admiral, and the two passed on, whilst Mr Greyquill,
retaining a hold on the rail of the bridge with his hand, gazed after
them with an unchanged face.

It was hard upon twelve o'clock when Captain Acton and his friend
reached the wharves. Though there was plenty of shipping about to
suggest occupation there was little apparently doing. Here and there a
song was monotonously sung by sailors or labourers who were leisurely
taking in or discharging cargo. Had the _Minorca_ sailed at her
appointed hour the little Harbour would no doubt have looked gay with
colours flying on the ships and plenty of gossips to see the vessels
off on the wharf.

Captain Acton and the Admiral turned into the Custom House, and the
first person they met after leaving it was Josiah Weaver, master of
the _Aurora_, a thick-set man of a dark-red complexion rendered more
glowing still by the sun, greasy deep-red hair, ear-rings, and brown
eyes which moved sharply in their sheaths.

"I find," cried Captain Acton, eagerly addressing him, "that the
_Minorca_ has sailed. How is this? Do you know anything about the
matter?"

"She left the Harbour at about a quarter past eight this morning, sir,"
answered Weaver.

"At about a quarter past eight!" exclaimed Captain Acton. "What was Mr
Lawrence's object in quitting his berth before the fixed time?"

Captain Weaver faintly smiled, slightly glancing at Admiral Lawrence.

"When I saw the ship starting," said he, "I walked over to her and
asked Mr Lawrence, who was standing right aft watching the crew
working, making sail and so forth, what made him in such a hurry, and
he answered that he had received news on the previous night of a French
cruiser that was hovering over this part of the coast, that when last
seen she was standing to the east'ard, and that he had made up his
mind to sneak the _Minorca_ out at daybreak if possible so as to have
the heels of her should she shift her helm, as he had no mind to start
his first voyage in Captain Acton's employ by being taken by a French
cruiser and locked up for a time no man could detarmine."

"And that was the reason for sailing which he gave you?" said Captain
Acton.

"Yes, sir."

Captain Acton looked at the Admiral, who was staring sternly into
Captain Weaver's face.

"Mr Lawrence told you," said Captain Acton, "that he had received the
news of this cruiser last night. At what hour, do you think?"

"That, sir, I couldn't say," answered Captain Weaver. "But we might
take it as his having heard it after eight o'clock."

"In that case he must have intended during the day," said Captain
Acton, addressing the Admiral, "to sail early this morning. For, as I
have explained to you, he could have had no time to do his business
at so early an hour at which he started this morning, nor would the
officials be seen at that time. Therefore he must have made the
necessary arrangements yesterday for what he contemplated as a daybreak
departure this morning."

"Does the ship call anywhere in England before her final departure for
her port?" asked the Admiral in a voice that proclaimed his heart hot
with bewilderment, doubt, and anger.

"No, sir," answered Captain Acton.

"A pity!" said the Admiral, striking the ground with his staff.
"Otherwise I would have posted it, caught him, and asked him his
reason, which to satisfy me would have to prove infinitely more
intelligible than the one Captain Weaver has repeated."

"I saw him two or three times yesterday," said Captain Acton. "He had
nothing to say about French cruisers in the offing. Nor did he give
me a hint that he was taking the necessary steps to quit this Harbour
early this morning."

"Is the ship in sight?" exclaimed the Admiral.

"No, sir. A man came down from the cliffs," answered Captain Weaver,
"and I asked him that question, and he said she'd rounded the coast to
the west'ard."

"The pilot," said Captain Acton, "was John Andrews. Was he on board, do
you know?"

"Yes, sir," answered Captain Weaver, "I took notice of him on the
fok'sle."

They could obtain no further information from Captain Weaver. They
called at "The Swan" and saw the landlord, who told them that he had
seen Mr Lawrence on the previous day, that, in fact, he had lunched at
the Inn and sat next him, but had said never a word about the change
in the sailing of his ship. They called upon Mrs Andrews, the pilot's
wife, who informed them that Mr Lawrence had told her husband the
day before that the hour of sailing had been changed, and that the
_Minorca_ would leave Old Harbour shortly after eight o'clock instead
of half-past twelve.

"Did Mr Lawrence state the reason of this change?" enquired Captain
Acton.

"Not to my husband, sir, who naturally thought the matter all right,
and said he would be on board at half-past seven."

They met Lieutenant Tupman of the _Saucy_ brig-of-war, a large, fat,
purple, smiling man, with the word grog written in small red veins over
his nose and parts of his cheeks: obviously a good-natured, drunken
fellow who would fight, no doubt, if a Frenchman opposed him, but who
preferred his bed and "The Swan" to frequent sentinel cruisings in his
little ship of war. Both gentlemen knew him slightly. They ventured on
this occasion to stop and accost him. They asked him if it was true
that news of a French cruiser being off the coast had come to hand, and
he answered that he had not heard of such a ship being near the coast.

The replies of other questions put to Mr Tupman were equally
unsatisfactory, and it now being past one o'clock and the information
the Captain and the Admiral had obtained not being worth the questions
that had elicited it, they stepped on to the bridge and walked in
the direction of Old Harbour House, the Admiral saying that he would
accompany the Captain to his home, as he was anxious to hear if Miss
Acton had obtained news of Lucy.

CHAPTER VIII

WHERE IS LUCY?

Captain Acton and the Admiral walked a few hundred paces in silence,
each lost in thought. Very abruptly the Admiral stopped, obliging his
companion to halt.

"If I have your permission, sir," he exclaimed, "I will at once
send a messenger in a post-chaise to the Commander-in-Chief at
Plymouth, and after stating the facts request him to send a ship to
overtake or intercept and arrest the _Minorca_, and you will then be
able to ascertain direct from my son the meaning and causes of his
extraordinary conduct."

Captain Acton resumed his walk, and the Admiral rolled by his side
beating the ground.

"That idea has occurred to me," he said, "and I have dismissed it, sir,
for what reception would the Commander-in-Chief give such a message as
you propose? The master of a ship, who is fully empowered to act in the
interests of his owners, chooses to leave a certain harbour some hours
earlier than the time announced. The reason he gives is that there
is a Frenchman in the neighbourhood whom he is anxious to avoid and
escape. The Commander-in-Chief's sympathy would be with him in that.
It is no case of piracy to ship a pilot, and the mate and crew which
the vessel carried last voyage; and besides, sir, would the sloop,
corvette, or frigate which the Commander-in-Chief might choose to
send, overhaul the _Minorca_ if your son determined that his purpose,
whatever it may be, should be prosecuted without interruption? She
is certainly as swift as the fastest thing that we have in the Navy,
and there is no reason to suppose that any vessel as fast would be
despatched in chase. Plymouth is a long distance from this spot, and
messengers are not always the rapid people we desire them to be. No,
sir, we have to accept the position as it is. The ship has sailed; Mr
Lawrence's conduct is unaccountable. We must continue to regard him
as the honourable, well-meaning man which I have found him during our
association in the matter of this command, and I must await with a
certain degree of confidence a letter in which he will communicate the
full meaning of what is now unintelligible to us."

The Admiral bowed in silence. He was the father of the person they were
talking about. Captain Acton's acceptance of an incident which must
instantly prove sinister to a suspicious intelligence was noble and
gracious, and it was certainly not for the father to endeavour to prove
his son a rogue and a scoundrel, and perhaps worse still, in the teeth
of the disposition of his employer to continue to place trust in him.

When they were within ten minutes' walk of Old Harbour House, they met
Mr Adams, who was an agent for a gentleman who lived in London, and who
owned a great deal of property in the neighbourhood of Old Harbour Town.

"I beg your pardon, squire," said Mr Adams, addressing Captain Acton,
who with the Admiral was passing on with a nod, "but I understand that
enquiries are being made after your daughter."

Both the old retired officers instantly stopped.

"Has she returned home?" asked Captain Acton.

"I cannot tell you that, sir, but this morning at about a quarter
before eight o'clock, I was about ten minutes' walk this side Old
Harbour Bridge. I was going up the road and met your daughter, who was
alone, coming down. A few minutes after I had passed her, I happened
to look round and perceived that she had been stopped by a young
man, humpbacked and otherwise deformed, well known to me as a fellow
who used to hang about Old Town, and called by the single word Paul.
As your daughter was alone I slackened my pace and continued to look
to see what the man wanted with her, and observed that he gave her
a letter which she read, and I heard her exclaim on reading it: 'Oh
dear! I hope it is not serious,' and she immediately walked swiftly on
followed by the fellow called Paul. She turned the bend of the road,
and I pursued my way."

"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Captain Acton, whose agitation was
marked when Mr Adams ceased to speak, "but may I enquire if you are
quite sure that it was my daughter whom you met?"

"Sir, there is but one Lucy Acton in this country, and no man who has
set eyes on her is ever likely to forget her beauty and sweetness."

Captain Acton bowed, but his distress was lively.

"What sort of a fellow was this who stopped Miss Acton?" enquired
the Admiral. "Was he a pauper? Broken clothes, whining voice, the
suppliant's demeanour--that sort of thing?"

"I have known the fellow by sight some years. He got his living by
running errands, and has in his day, I believe, been watched with
some attention by the magistrates. He is a red-haired, hunchbacked,
long-armed man with rounded legs, and I marked a peculiarity in him
whilst he addressed the lady which I have before taken notice of when
passing him as he lounged in the sun, or stood waiting in a door: I
mean that whilst the young lady was reading the missive, he scratched
his left shoulder precisely as a monkey scratches himself."

Captain Acton started, and stared hard at Mr Adams.

"Did you notice how he was dressed?" he asked.

"In a camlet jacket. There was something of the sailor's rig in his
costume."

"Then the fellow," said Captain Acton, "is steward of the _Minorca_!
This gentleman," said he, addressing the Admiral, "has exactly
described the figure of a man who passed me in the cabin two or three
days ago when I was talking to Mr Lawrence. Judging that he belonged to
the ship, and being struck by his appearance, I asked Mr Lawrence who
he was, and he answered that he was a poor devil whom he had shipped
as a steward or captain's waiter out of pity, and he said something
about having once paid a fine for the man to rescue him from a term of
imprisonment to which he would have been sentenced for some trifling
offence."

The Admiral's face wore an expression that was almost imbecile with
bewilderment.

"From whom was that letter? Who is the person that Miss Lucy has
fled to help? It cannot possibly be my son, sir. If he had met with
a serious accident, would the ship have sailed? But even if he had
met with a serious accident and left the duty of going to sea with
the mate, would he have sent to Miss Lucy? I am utterly beaten. I see
nothing, and can conjecture nothing!"

Captain Acton with a violent effort had by this time recollected
himself.

"I am much obliged to you, sir, for your information," he said to Mr
Adams. "We may find her at home, sir," he said, addressing the Admiral.
"An explanation will simplify the miraculous. Good day, sir, and many
thanks."

He bowed to Mr Adams, and again set off with the Admiral for Old
Harbour House.

"To me it is impossible to suppose," said Sir William, "that my son
could have written the letter which Mr Adams saw your daughter reading.
Captain Weaver told us plainly that my son was aft on the quarterdeck
of the _Minorca_ at the time that she was hauling out from the wharf.
It is perfectly clear therefore that no accident could have befallen
him. Nor is it imaginable that, even if he had met with a disaster, he
would dream of communicating with your daughter. Why your daughter,
sir? If they are on bowing terms we may take it that their intimacy
scarcely goes farther. Depend upon it, there is some man in connection
with this business, in whom your daughter is interested--of course,
sir, you will understand me to mean as a sweet and beautiful Christian
sympathiser, as one to whom every sort of misfortune appeals, to whom
suffering and misery are quick to make themselves known, being sure of
heartfelt, womanly pity. The moment I have had a peck, after hearing
whether Miss Lucy has arrived at home, I will devote the rest of the
day to enquiries about this person who wrote the letter which Mr Adams
saw delivered."

"Speculation is idle," exclaimed Captain Acton, with a slight flavour
of impatience in his manner. "I am profoundly puzzled. There can be no
question from Mr Adams's statement and from my own observation that the
fellow who delivered the missive is cabin-boy, or steward, or whatever
you please to call him, of the _Minorca_, chosen by your son, as he
admits, though it seemed to me as I looked at him that nobody less
likely and less inviting for such a post could have been found in the
district."

These and a few further words brought them to the gateway of Old
Harbour House. They entered and found Miss Acton in the dining-room.

"Well," she cried in a voice of tremulous eagerness, "have you heard of
her?"

This was proof conclusive that Miss Acton had not.

"She has not returned, then?" said Captain Acton.

"No, nor can I get to hear of her," answered Miss Acton, whose voice
trembled with tears and terror. "Wasn't she down on the wharves?"

"We have heard of her, but not as we could wish, sister," said Captain
Acton. "But what have _you_ done to find her, or to hear of her?"

"Why," answered the old lady, "I sent George and Joseph on horseback to
every house where she is known, and she has visited none, nor been seen
by any this morning. Yes, Mrs Moore as she was passing our gate, caught
a sight of her coming out of the house at half-past seven, or at some
such time, and gave her a curtsy and received a smile. But nobody else
that George and Joseph met and called upon has seen her this day. What
have you to tell me about her?"

Captain Acton repeated Mr Adams's statement. The old lady's face
was slowly moulded into a mask that her friends would scarcely have
recognised by the horror and terror that worked in her.

She cried: "A dirty fellow giving her a letter, and beguiling her and
luring her into some dreadful place, perhaps to her destruction! Oh
dear! oh dear! what is to be done? Can't she be discovered? Can't the
bell-man raise the alarm? Who can the wretch be that wrote to her? And
why should she rush away to his help? Oh dear! oh dear! what is to be
done?"

"I'll do something," said the Admiral. "I'll call upon you this evening
and tell you what I have found out. Farewell for the present. No, I
thank you, I must go home first and I'll get a bite that awaits me, and
then away to Old Harbour Town, and the place shall be dredged, and the
fellow who wrote the letter found, and the lady restored to her home if
wrong has been done her, if there is one ounce of energy left in this
old composition."

He bowed with the vehemence of a man who butts at another, struck
the floor hard with his staff, and rolled out on legs that showed
themselves more expeditious than his years seemed to promise.

Captain and Miss Acton sat down to dinner. An elegant repast was
rendered insipid in every dish by the absence of Lucy. The Captain's
excellent if fastidious appetite was gone, and his eyes often wandered
to his daughter's vacant place. Brother and sister had but one subject
in their minds; they talked but little, however, for servants were
present.

When they were alone, Miss Acton exclaimed: "I hope I may be forgiven
if I do him a wrong, and I love his old father, who is the soul of
honour and a fine example of a true gentleman of the sea, but I cannot
help thinking, brother, that Mr Lawrence has had a hand in our Lucy's
disappearance."

And the worthy old lady's eyes grew dim as she pronounced the words
"our Lucy."

Captain Acton started from a reverie and looked at her attentively.

"You want to imply," he cried, "that there was an understanding between
Mr Lawrence and my daughter?"

"I cannot imagine why the steward of the ship came to be employed, as
Mr Adams tells us--an assertion you justify by saying that you saw this
man in the cabin of the vessel--unless Mr Lawrence sent the letter."

Captain Acton expanded his chest, and a look of haughtiness entered his
face.

"Sister, is your opinion of Lucy such that you imagine she can have
anything to do with Mr Lawrence unknown to me?"

But a quality of stubbornness was one of Miss Acton's characteristics.

"He offered her marriage, brother."

"Yes. And she rejected him with the peremptoriness which I should have
expected in her."

"A woman," said Miss Acton, "cannot but think with more or less
kindness of the man who offers her marriage and who loves her. She may
reject him, but she will always feel a tenderness for him."

"But do I understand," said Captain Acton, "that you mean that Lucy
was secretly attached to the man whose hand she declined, and that she
speeds to him at the first call that is made upon her by such a missive
as the fellow Paul delivered?"

"I cannot but think," answered Miss Acton, "that Lucy had a secret
hankering after Mr Lawrence. He is exceedingly handsome. In bearing he
is superior to any man of quality I ever met, and for fine manners you
must look to the aristocracy of this country. He can make a leg with
the grace equal to any master of elegant salutations; and though his
character is bad, yet there are many points in him which women admire,
and I say," she continued, with perseverance and a fixity of meaning
truly astonishing in an old lady who in most matters scarcely knew
her own mind, who was easily filled with terror, and who seldom acted
without consulting her friends, "Lucy has a secret liking for the man,
which could scarcely escape the observation of any one who watched them
when they are in company."

With an expression of face that was near to amazement Captain Acton
said: "Do you want me to believe that Lucy has eloped with Mr Lawrence?"

"Lord forbid! She is too God-fearing, and too nobly and sweetly moulded
as a woman to be capable of any such descent."

"Then I do not understand you," said Captain Acton.

"What has become of her?" cried Miss Acton, sinking suddenly into her
tremulous voice and into a manner of alarm, bewilderment, and general
confusion of mind. "What shall you do to find out?"

"As I am quite convinced," said Captain Acton, "that Mr Lawrence has
nothing to do with this business, and as I feel persuaded that the
call made upon her is by some man or woman--for how are we to know
the sex of the person who wrote that letter?--in whom her charity is
interested, and whom she has been helping according to her wont in ways
unknown to us, I shall devote the afternoon as Sir William intends, to
making enquiries in Old Harbour Town and about the wharves----"

"But she cannot be in Old Town or even in the district," broke in Miss
Acton, "or why did she not return to dinner? She has had the whole
morning. From a little after seven till now is a very long time, and a
hundred acts of charity may be performed in less."

Though Captain Acton was not a man to be influenced by his sister's
opinions he knew her to be in many directions a shrewd, observant
woman, who could deliver herself of many stupid antiquated notions,
whilst at times she would astonish him by the sagacity of her views
and the penetration with which she interpreted human motives. We shall
not be surprised, therefore, when we learn that shortly after dinner
he ordered his mare to be saddled, and rode straight into Old Harbour
Town, where he stabled the mare at "The Swan" and walked direct to the
wharves, first of all to learn if anybody had seen Lucy down at the
shipping early that morning.

He made for the _Aurora_ and found Captain Weaver on board. He
immediately related Mr Adams' story, and asked Captain Weaver if he had
seen Miss Lucy Acton down by the _Minorca_ or near her, or aboard of
her shortly before she sailed.

"No, sir," was Captain Weaver's answer. "I came on to the wharf as
the _Minorca_ was warping out, and talked with Mr Lawrence from the
quay-side. I saw nothing of the young lady, who, depend upon it, sir,
would have immediately caught my attention had I seen her."

"It is very strange," said Captain Acton, "that that mis-shapen fellow
made by Mr Lawrence the steward of the ship, should be employed to
convey a letter to my daughter at so early an hour when there was very
little likelihood of finding the young lady abroad."

"The whole job of the ship sailing before her time is a mystery to me,
sir," said Captain Weaver.

"Walk with me, and we'll endeavour to find out if Miss Lucy Acton was
on the wharf after the hour of half-past seven this morning, and before
the _Minorca_ sailed."

Captain Weaver knew many who were engaged on the several wharves, and
so indeed did Captain Acton. They asked two or three score of different
persons the question, but the majority had not been down on the wharves
at that time, and the few who were at work declared that they had not
seen her. It seemed impossible to Captain Weaver as well as to Captain
Acton, that so beautiful and well known a lady as Miss Lucy should
make her appearance on the wharf at a time of day when scarce more than
labourers were about, without being either recognised or seen, and her
presence borne witness to by those who did not know who she was.

They went on board the several vessels lying in the harbour, but the
answer they received was that of the wharf: Miss Lucy Acton had not
been seen, or at all events noticed.

"I will leave you," said Captain Acton, "to make further enquiries,
sir, and you will be pleased to immediately communicate with me at my
home should you meet with anybody who can positively swear that my
daughter was down here between seven and eight this morning."

He seemed convinced by these enquiries at the wharves that at all
events Mr Lawrence could have had nothing whatever to do with the
communication which Mr Adams had seen Paul place in the hands of Miss
Lucy. Who, then, was the sender of the note, and how was it that Paul,
who should have been on board his ship since she was on the eve of
sailing, should have been engaged to carry the letter? There was really
no particular reason why the writer should be a man. Why should not she
be a woman? She might even be a relative of the fellow Paul. Lucy was
a girl of singular kindness, who was always helping others and going
amongst the poor and ministering to the afflicted; and though Captain
Acton could not positively say, he might readily believe that she had
one or two or three poor sufferers on her list whom she saw to and
helped with her purse, and one of these--possibly a woman--might have
written the letter in a moment of urgency intending it for delivery at
Old Harbour House.

Captain Acton walked slowly towards Old Harbour Town. He was sunk
in thought, and was in deep distress and at a loss to know what to
do. He had no machinery of police to command. 1805 was a year very
primitive as compared with 1905. He reflected that the first step in
the disappearance of his daughter as represented in the statement of
Mr Adams might indicate nothing in respect of the real cause of her
disappearance. Because, suppose his surmise was correct, and that she
had hastened to the help of some afflicted or humble person whom she
befriended, she might, after having left the place wherever it was,
have met with some disaster; she might have fallen over the cliff--she
might on some roundabout way home have been robbed and left for dying;
in short, when a person mysteriously disappears a hundred reasons for
his or her envanishment will occur to the mind, and any one of them
may so satisfy, so convince, that those who accept it will go to work
as though it were the truth though it possess but the very attenuated
merit of being a conjecture.

At six o'clock, greatly wearied, Captain Acton mounted his mare at "The
Swan" stables and rode home. He was very pale. Indeed this man loved
his daughter, who was his only child. His immediate question, put with
bright-eyed passion to the servant who came to the door, was, "Has Miss
Lucy returned?"

"No, sir."

"Has news been received of her?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"Has Admiral Lawrence been here?"

"No, sir."

Captain Acton walked into his house and sought his sister, whom he
found alone in the dining-room. She was seated on a high-backed chair
knitting. Her own and Lucy's dog lay at her feet. She started at the
entrance of Captain Acton, dropped her knitting in her lap, and half
rose at her brother, clutching the arms of the chair.

"Well!" she cried in a note that was like a suppressed scream with
excitement, fear, and expectation. "What have you heard? Is there any
news of her? What have you to tell me?"

He sat down, looking very weary.

"I have heard nothing of her, sister. Nobody saw her on the wharf at
the time the _Minorca_ sailed, and there was plenty about, labourers
ashore, and sailors in the ships."

"Then what have you done to find out what has become of her?"

"Believing that she might have met with some accident--God knows
of what serious nature--on her return from the person whose letter
she received"--Miss Acton looked stunned at such an idea--"I called
at Arrowsmith's first of all, and wrote out a placard, offering a
reward of fifty guineas to any one who can find Miss Lucy Acton, who
can state her whereabouts, or who can give any information as to her
disappearance since half-past seven o'clock this morning, which was
dated and the day named. This placard will be printed and pasted in Old
Harbour Town, and over a wide area of the district before nightfall.
I also gave a copy of this placard to the bell-man. What further
publicity could I command?"

"But what do you fear, brother? What could have happened to her?"

"Why, suppose on her way home by way of the cliffs, or by any other of
the roads by which this house may be gained, she fell upon the rocks,
or was met by a band of gipsies, or attacked for her money and left for
dead----"

His feelings overcame him, and he looked upon the ground in silence.

"Nothing of the sort. I am sure of it!" exclaimed Miss Acton. "Who
hears of such outrages happening here?"

"But to fall over the edge of a cliff is not an outrage," said Captain
Acton.

"She is too careful. She may safely be trusted. Besides, are there
not blockaders stationed along these cliffs, and would not one see
her on the rocks? No, no, no! an accident is not the cause of her
disappearance. The more I think, the more persuaded I am that Mr
Lawrence has had a hand in this horrid business. Why did he sail so
early and long before his time? Why was his steward Paul engaged to
carry the letter?"

"You again want to imply, sister," said Captain Acton with a darkling
face, "that my daughter has eloped with the man she rejected."

"Rejected, but she has a hankering for him still," said the old lady
with one of those smiles of knowingness which make the lineaments
ghastly when bitter sorrow and tragic trouble are the topics talked
about.

Captain Acton left the room to refresh himself with a change of
apparel, and returned after a brief absence. He was a man of
considerable but not powerful self-control. He entered the room with
a face that indicated a certain resolution of mind, and said to his
sister: "I have been thinking, perhaps, that we have been unnecessarily
flurried and somewhat hurried in our conjecture and efforts. I believe
I have done well in giving all possible publicity to the fact that
Lucy left her home this morning and has not returned. But when I come
to reflect that even now it is not twelve hours since she started on
her early walk, I consider that she has not been long enough absent to
cause us the bitter anxiety we have felt and are feeling. Suppose after
visiting the person from whom she received the letter, she breakfasted
with a friend on the other side of Old Harbour Town. This friend may
have induced her to stop to dinner; a drive might follow. There are
hundreds of things in this business which when explained would seem
perfectly reasonable, so that at any moment she may turn up and tell
us the story of her day's outing, and wonder that we should be so
troubled because of an absence that she makes perfectly comprehensible.
I shall hold to this view," he continued firmly, "until the night is
advanced. If she does not return to-night then we must take further
steps to-morrow."

"What steps?" asked his sister. "What steps have not been taken that
remain to be taken?"

He had suddenly sunk in reflection and did not answer her.

"I should be uneasy in my mind in any case," said Miss Acton. "But that
odious steward of the _Minorca_ being in the business together with the
unwarrantable sailing of the vessel hours before her time, fills me
with dread and terror, and I cannot, brother, listen to what you say
about her breakfasting and dining with a friend and going for a drive,
and so forth. She would guess at our suspense and anxiety. Is our Lucy
a girl to cause unnecessary pain and unhappiness, not indeed to those
who love her as we do, but to the humblest creature in the world?"

Just then the door was opened, and the footman announced "Admiral Sir
William Lawrence."

The old gentleman entered, not with his familiar deep-sea rolling
gait, but slowly and wearily, and with an air of dejection. Lucy's dog
welcomed him by barking and rushing at his shoe and trying to bite
through it. Miss Acton rose and sank in a curtsy which is to be seen
in these days only on the stage, but her kindly heart quickened her
gaze for anything that invited sympathy, and she immediately said: "Sir
William, you are quite worn out. You need refreshment. Pray sit, pray
sit! What will you take?"

"We will have some brandy and seltzer water," said Captain Acton,
pulling the bell, knowing this drink to be as great a favourite with
the Admiral as hock and soda water was with Lord Byron.

"I am sorry to say," said the Admiral, sinking into a chair, "that I
have brought no news."

"I have scoured Old Harbour Town and can obtain no information," said
Captain Acton; "but it is certain that no one seems to have seen her
down on the wharf between seven and eight this morning."

"I heard the bell-man recite your notice," said Sir William, speaking
leisurely, as one who is tired out; "that, and the bill which they were
beginning to paste as I came this way, should help. I've walked my
legs off. I have enquired everywhere. I, too, asked if Miss Lucy had
been seen down at the harbour at any hour this morning. But my fixed
idea was, and still is, that the person who wrote to her through the
_Minorca's_ steward was somebody that she helped, somebody in poverty
and want, and I called upon everybody likely to know of the existence
of such an individual; but to no purpose. The parson, the apothecary,
all the tradespeople I looked in upon, could tell me nothing. Once I
thought I had run the person we want to earth. Mrs Moore, who keeps
the greengrocer's shop, told me that there was an old woman who lived
in a cottage just out of Lower Street, out of whose house she had once
seen Miss Lucy Acton issue. I got the address, called at the cottage
and saw a squalid female who said she was Mrs Mortimer's niece, and
that Mrs Mortimer had died that morning at five o'clock. She said it
was true that Miss Acton occasionally visited Mrs Mortimer and brought
her little comforts and read to her. I got no further. This is the
extent and value of my report, and I am as profoundly puzzled," said
the Admiral, raising the glass of brandy and seltzer and examining it
before he drank, "as I was this morning."

"She may turn up at any moment," said Captain Acton, with more gloom
than the hope his words expressed justified. "She has only been twelve
hours missing."

"Only!" cried Miss Acton. "Sir William," she went on slowly, nodding,
at him whilst her face hardened, "I have a conviction which my brother
does not share. It seems to me, sir, impossible to think of the
unexpected and terrifying departure of the _Minorca_ hours before her
time, and the conveyance of a letter by the steward of the vessel,
without feeling the conviction I speak of."

"And what is that conviction, madam?" asked Sir William, from whose
jolly round face fatigue had robbed much of its warm colour.

"I regret to have to say it," said Miss Acton, "but I must think--I
cannot help it, that Mr Lawrence's hand is in this strange
disappearance of my niece."

Captain Acton slightly frowned upon the old dame, and exclaimed: "I
think, Caroline, you should have withheld your conviction, for the
present at all events, from Admiral Lawrence."

Sir William looked firmly and somewhat sternly at Miss Acton and said:
"I am very sorry, madam, that you should hold this opinion, very sorry
indeed. I had thought you the friend and well-wisher of my son--in this
respect eminently the charitable and warm-hearted sister of Captain
Acton. But if you mean to imply that Mr Lawrence wrote the letter to
Miss Lucy, then you have to confess (which would be an indignity done
to a beautiful character) that your niece was a willing recipient of
my son's missive, that she hastened to him on reading the contents of
his communication and that in short, the design of the _Minorca's_
premature sailing was that Mr Lawrence and Miss Lucy Acton should
elope--a thing not to be dreamt of--at an hour when few were abroad,
and when there was little or no chance of the news reaching her home
that Captain Acton's daughter had sailed in the _Minorca_."

Scarcely had the old gentleman pronounced these words when a footman,
throwing open the door, exclaimed: "Mr Greyquill presents his humble
respects to Captain Acton, and desires leave to speak with him."

"Mr Greyquill!" cried Captain Acton.

"Mr Greyquill!" echoed the Admiral, looking with a changed face at the
footman.

"Mr Greyquill!" cried Miss Acton. "Why, he may have come with news of
Lucy. Bid him step in!"

The footman disappeared.

"What on earth but some news of my daughter can bring Greyquill here at
this hour?" said Captain Acton.

The Admiral looked deaf, and continued to stare at the door, which in a
few moments was again flung open, and Mr Greyquill entered.

CHAPTER IX

MR GREYQUILL'S VISIT

Mr Greyquill entered the room by two paces, and placing his hand upon
the spot where he supposed his heart to lie, made three separate bows
to the company, each of the "Your most humble and obedient servant"
school; it was an expression of ceremony which for mingled respect and
senility should have pleased, as it no doubt did please, Miss Acton.

He was a figure striking in its way as he made these bows, with his
long, snow-white hair, his heavy white eyebrows, his long curling
nose, the purely congenital satiric leer that characterised the
formation of his thin lips; and his faded dress, which was a very good
representation of his mind, aided the impression produced by his face.

Admiral Lawrence gave him a nod which was barely a mark of recognition.
Captain Acton bowed to him in silence. Miss Acton cried out:

"Pray step in, Mr Greyquill, and be seated!"

Greyquill sidled rather than walked in and sat down on a chair removed
from the others, and observing enquiry strong in each face as those who
watched him would not condescend to enquire the purpose of his visit,
but waited to hear it, he said: "I was coming out of Lower Street this
afternoon, when I heard the bell-man recite the announcement that Miss
Lucy Acton had been missing from her home this morning since between
seven and eight o'clock, and a reward of fifty guineas is offered
to any one who shall proclaim her whereabouts, or who shall help to
restore her to her family."

"That is so," said Captain Acton, viewing him gravely.

"Have you news of her?" cried Miss Acton.

"I wish to state, sir," said Mr Greyquill, addressing Captain Acton,
"that if I should prove instrumental, not in the restoration of Miss
Lucy Acton to her home, but in your discovering where she is, and
how she got there, my candour will be due entirely to the very great
respect I entertain for the young lady who has always had a kindly word
for me, and whose character is an extremely lovable one, and to the
regret, I may say indignation, that one so young, beautiful and rich,
should fall into such unworthy hands."

He glanced at the Admiral, who returned the look with a compressed
brow, whilst with his right hand he seemed to be keeping time to an
inward and secret tune with the play of his fingers upon the knee where
the leg of his breeches fell into his stocking.

"Oh, pray continue, sir! Pray continue!" cried Miss Acton in a voice
that was almost husky with the hysteric quality of her emotions.

"In other words, sir," continued Mr Greyquill, still addressing Captain
Acton, "I beg to state that if I should be so fortunate as to help you
in your trouble I desire no money reward, nor should dream of taking
any."

Captain Acton merely bowed.

"I have not met with the usage," old Greyquill went on calmly, steadily
exasperating Miss Acton by a preface that was disgusting and needless
whilst she thirsted for the one essential fact, "that I certainly
think I deserve from either Admiral Sir William Lawrence, nor his son,
Mr Lawrence." He spoke with so complete a neglect of the Admiral's
presence that the old gentleman might have been out of the room. "They
have no claim upon my kindness."

"We shall be thankful to receive any news of Miss Lucy Acton," said
Captain Acton, with that collectedness of manner which implies the
glazing by a vigorous will of passions growing turbulent.

"Two or three days after your appointment of Mr Lawrence as master
of the _Minorca_, I chanced to be going by way of Old Friar's Road
to visit some houses belonging to me. At the bend of the road, which
conceals the bridge and Old Harbour Town I met Mr Lawrence, and we
exchanged a few sentences on the subject of the sum of three hundred
pounds which he owes me. He informed me that when you, sir, had paid
him off on his return he would hand me the sum of twenty-five guineas
in part payment of his debt. We each pursued our way. When I had gone
a few yards I stopped and turned to look after him. He had disappeared
round the bend of the road, but just about the place where he and I
had conversed I saw something white. It was a letter. Thinking I had
dropped it in unconscious play of my hands during our talk, I returned
and picked it up."

The old man put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the letter, which
he held on his knee, whilst he continued: "It was not addressed, as
you will presently see, but the contents which I took the liberty of
reading, the letter being open and manifestly a stray article which
was anybody's property, assured me that it had just now fallen from
the pocket of Mr Lawrence, who had brought it out possibly with his
pocket-handkerchief, but who would not know of his loss by looking
behind him as the turn of the road hid it from him. I was greatly
astounded by the contents of this letter, which is in Mr Lawrence's
handwriting, and somewhat incensed by reading that he termed me an
old scamp, I, who had proved his friend at a time when friendship was
valuable to him, and who have shown him every consideration since. Will
you read the letter, sir?"

Mr Greyquill left his seat and stepped across with the missive to
Captain Acton. The Captain glanced at the contents, and without reading
extended the letter to the Admiral, saying: "Is this your son's
writing, sir?"

The Admiral took the letter, ran his eyes over it, and answered,
returning the letter to Captain Acton: "It is."

"It is a draft or copy," said Captain Acton. "It is undated, and it is
without the formal beginning of My dear, etc."

He then read slowly and deliberately, the handwriting being good and
clear:

     "I should have answered your letter sooner but I have been so
     worried by debts and difficulties, by compulsory idleness and the
     absolute impossibility of finding anything congenial to do, that
     I have had no spirit to communicate with you or anybody else. But
     the wheel of fortune which has depressed me to the very bottom,
     has by another revolution, raised me. I must tell you that I am
     very heavily in debt. Even in this antiquated hole I owe an old
     scamp, named Greyquill, three hundred pounds, of which I have
     only had two hundred. I am in debt, some of them debts of honour,
     to several men, a few of whom I have spoken of in my time as
     brother-officers, and one of them quite recently threatened me
     with the law. In addition, I owe a lot to various tradespeople
     in London and elsewhere. So that my personal liberty hangs by a
     hair, and at any moment I may find myself clapped on the shoulder,
     arrested for debt, and flung into gaol, there to languish possibly
     for the remainder of my days, for it is quite certain that my
     father cannot, even if he would, come to my help. His private
     means are very small, and his pension inconsiderable, and though
     he has behaved very well in maintaining me since I quitted the
     Service, and allowed me to use his cottage as a home, he is a man
     whose morality is high and severe, and he is the last person to
     part with a farthing in discharge of debts which he regards as
     dishonourable.

     "I had made up my mind to ship before the mast in a vessel bound
     to America, where I should have left her, and sought my fortune
     in a new country; when through the great kindness that a rich
     gentleman in this district has for my father, I was offered the
     command of a barque called the _Minorca_, a handsome little vessel
     of about five hundred tons, on terms which a Merchant shipmaster
     would consider liberal, but which to one, in the face of what
     I owe, are as a penny piece in the value of a guinea. Captain
     Acton (R.N., retired)--you may have met him--is the owner of the
     two little ships. He lives in a beautiful old house, planted in
     the midst of a fine prospect of gardens and orchards. He has one
     child, a daughter, a young creature so beautiful that the instant
     I saw her I irrecoverably lost my heart to her. I offered her
     marriage; she rejected me, probably because she had been told that
     I was a drinker and a gambler. I am, nevertheless, determined to
     possess her as my wife, and with that view have promptly conceived
     a stratagem or plot which should either end in enabling me to pay
     off all my debts and live at peace in this country, or be hanged
     as a pirate."

The Admiral, who had heretofore discovered no signs of life, started in
his chair and clenched his fist.

     "It is you, my dear Dick, and old companion, mess-mate and
     friend, with whom I have enjoyed many a jaunt to which I could
     never recur without passionately lamenting the days that are no
     more, who will help me in this desperate undertaking. I propose