lost or stolen?"

"Stolen, sir."

"So much the better. I hope the thief will never be discovered."

Laud did not say how he happened to know that the tin box had been
stolen, for Captain Patterdale, the deputy sheriff, and Nellie were
supposed to be the only persons who had any knowledge of the fact.

"It appears that in this tin box there was a certain fifty-dollar bill,
which had been torn into four parts, and mended by pasting two strips of
paper upon it, one extending from right to left, and the other from top
to bottom, on the back."

"Eh?" interposed the wicked nabob. "Wait a minute."

The captain opened an iron safe in the room, and from a drawer took out
a handful of bank bills. From these he selected three, and tossed them
on the table.

"Like those?" he inquired, with interest.

"Exactly like them," replied Laud, astonished to find that each was the
counterpart of the one he had paid Donald for the Juno, and had the
"white cross of Denmark" upon it.

"Do you know how those bills happened to be in that condition, Mr.
Cavendish?" chuckled the captain.

"Of course I do not, sir."

"I'll tell you, my gay buffer. I have got a weak, soft place somewhere
in my gizzard; I don't know where; if I did, I'd cut it out. About three
months ago, just after I brought from Portland one hundred of these new
fifty-dollar bills, there was a great cry here for money for some
missionary concern. I read something in the newspaper, at this time,
about what some of the missionaries had done for a lot of sailors who
had been cast away on the South Sea Islands. I thought more of the
psalm-singers than ever before, and I was tempted to do something for
them. Well, I actually wrote to some parson here who was howling for
money, and stuck four of those bills between the leaves. I think it is
very likely I should have sent them to the parson, if I hadn't been
called out of the room. I threw the note, with the bills in it, on the
table, and went out to see a pair of horses a jockey had driven into the
yard for me to look at. When I came back and glanced at the note, I
thought what a fool I had been, to think of giving money to those
canting psalm-singers. I was mad with myself for my folly, and I tore
the note into four pieces before I thought that the bills were in it.
But Mrs. Sykes mended them as you see. Go on with your yarn, my buffer."

"That bill I paid to Don John for the Juno," continued Laud. "He paid it
to Mr. Leach