ad gone off in an Australian
steamer.

At these lodgings the inquiry resulted in the discovery of the name of
the steamer; and there was still time to look up the agent and the date
approximately enough to obtain the list of the crew, with David Jones
among them. It further appeared that this same David Jones had fallen
overboard and been drowned, but as he had not entered himself as a
married man, his wife had remained in ignorance of his fate. It was,
however, perfectly clear that the little girl was an orphan, and that
Bertha might be quite undisturbed in the possession of her.

And thus Lord Northmoor came home a good deal fagged, and shocked by the
interior he had seen at Rotherhithe, but quite triumphant.

Bertha was delighted, and declared herself eternally grateful to him; and
she could not but entertain the hope that the _soi-disant_ parent would
make another application, in which case she was quite prepared to give
him into custody; and she proceeded to reckon up the number of times that
he had applied to her, and the amount that he had extracted, wondering at
herself for not having asked for proofs, but owning that she had been
afraid of being thus compelled to give up the child to perdition.

The applications had all been within the last year, so that the man had
probably learnt from Louisa Hall, the nursery-maid, that Cea was the
child of a deserted wife.

A letter from Mrs. Morton gave some of the antecedents of Sam Rattler, as
learnt from Mrs. Hall, the charwoman, whose great dread he was. His real
surname was Jones, and he was probably a Samuel Jones whose name Lord
Northmoor had noted as a boy on board David's ship. He belonged to a
decent family in a country village, but had run away to sea, and was
known at Westhaven by this nickname. He had a brother settled in Canada,
who had lately written to propose to him a berth on one of the Ontario
steamers, and it was poor Mrs. Hall's dread that her daughter should
accompany him, though happily want of money prevented it. As to his
appearance, as to which there had been special inquiries, he was a tall
fine-looking man, with a black beard, and half the girls at Westhaven
were fools enough to be after him.

All this tallied with what had been gathered from the child, and this
last had probably been a bold attempt to procure the passage-money for
his sweetheart.

He never did call again, having probably been convinced of the failure of
his scheme,