en began to tremble and to exclaim at this news, and to ask one
question after another, and Mr. Lindsey shook his head impatiently.

"We can't stand talking our affairs in the station all night," said he.
"Let's get to an hotel, my lad--we're all wanting our suppers. You don't
seem as if you were in very bad spirits, yourself."

"I'm all right, Mr. Lindsey," I answered cheerfully. "I've been down to
Jericho, it's true, and to worse, but I chanced across a good Samaritan
or two. And I've looked out a clean and comfortable hotel for you, and
we'll go there now."

I led them away to a good hotel that I had noticed in my walks, and while
they took their suppers I sat by and told them all my adventure, to the
accompaniment of many exclamations from my mother and Maisie. But Mr.
Lindsey made none, and I was quick to notice that what most interested
him was that I had been to see Mr. Gavin Smeaton.

"But what for did you not come straight home when you were safely on
shore again?" asked my mother, who was thinking of the expense I was
putting her to. "What's the reason of fetching us all this way when
you're alive and well?"

I looked at Mr. Lindsey--knowingly, I suppose.

"Because, mother," I answered her, "I believed yon Carstairs would go
back to Berwick and tell that there'd been a sad accident, and I was
dead--drowned--and I wanted to let him go on thinking that I was
dead--and so I decided to keep away. And if he is alive, it'll be the
best thing to let the man still go on thinking I was drowned--as I'll
prove to Mr. Lindsey there. If Carstairs is alive, I say, it's the right
policy for me to keep out of his sight and our neighbourhood."

"Aye!" agreed Mr. Lindsey, who was a quick hand at taking up things.
"There's something in that, Hugh."

"Well, it's beyond me, all this," observed my mother, "and it all comes
of me taking yon Gilverthwaite into the house! But me and Maisie'll away
to our beds, and maybe you and Mr. Lindsey'll get more light out of the
matter than I can, and glad I'll be when all this mystery's cleared up
and we'll be able to live as honest folk should, without all this flying
about the country and spending good money."

I contrived to get a few minutes with Maisie, however, before she and my
mother retired, and I found then that, had I known it, I need not have
been so anxious and disturbed. For they had attached no particular
importance to the fact that I had not returned the night before; t