e make any remark on his under-teacher's absence?"

"No, ma'am."

"The school went on just as usual?"

"No-o, ma'am "--I hesitated--"not quite just as usual. Mr. Stimcoe
was unwell."

"Drunk?"

"My dear Miss Belcher!" put in the scandalized Plinny. "A scholar,
and such a gentleman!"

"Fiddlestick-end!" snapped the unconscionable lady, not removing her
eyes from mine. "Was this man Stimcoe drunk, eh? No; I beg your
pardon," she corrected herself. "I oughtn't to be asking a boy to
tell tales out of school. 'Thou shalt not say anything to get another
fellow into trouble'--that's the first and last commandment--eh,
Harry Brooks? But, my good soul"--she turned on Plinny--"if 'drunk
and incapable' isn't written over the whole of that seminary, you may
call me a Dutchwoman!"

"There's a point or so clear enough," she announced, after a pause,
when I had finished my story.

"We must placard the whole country with a description of that
prisoner chap Glass," said Mr. Jack Rogers; "and I'd best be off to
Falmouth and get the bills printed at once."

"Indeed?" said Miss Belcher, dryly. "And pray how are you proposing
to describe him?"

"Why, as for that, I should have thought Harry's description here,
backed up by Mr. Goodfellow's, was enough to lay a trail upon any
man. My dear Lydia, a fellow roaming the country in a red coat,
drill trousers, and a japanned hat!"

"It would obviously excite remark: so obviously that the likelihood
might even occur to the man himself."

Mr. Rogers looked crestfallen for a moment.

"You suggest that by this time he has changed his rig?"

"I suggest, rather, that he started by changing it, say, as far back
as St. Mawes. Some one must ride to St. Mawes at once and make
inquiries." Miss Belcher drummed her fingers on the table.
"But the man," she said thoughtfully, "will have reached Plymouth
long before this."

"You don't think it possible he went back the same way he came?"

"In a world, Jack, where you find yourself a magistrate, all things
are possible. But I don't think it at all likely."

"It's a rum story altogether," mused Mr. Rogers. "A couple of
murders in this part of the world, and mixed up with an island full
of treasure! Why, damme, 'tis almost like Shakespeare!"

"For my part," observed Miss Plinlimmon, with great simplicity,
"though sometimes accused of leaning unduly toward the romantic, I
should be inclined to set down this story of Captain Cof