b,
as used to be master o' the _Uncle an' Aunt?_"

"I don't tell you anything," said the child, and added, "he's a
different man altogether."

"That's curious now." Captain Cai walked on a pace or two and halted
again. "But you're Tabb's child," he insisted. "And, by the trick of
his voice, if that wasn't Lijah--"

"His name _is_ Elijah."

"Eh?" queried Captain Cai, rubbing his ear. "But I heard tell," he went
on in a puzzled way, searching his memory, "as Lijah Tabb an' Rogers had
quarrelled desp'rate an' burnt the papers, so to speak."

"'Twas worse than that." She did not answer his look, but kept her eyes
fixed ahead.

"Yet here I find the man keepin' shop for Rogers: and as for you--if
you're his daughter--"

"I'm in service with Mr Rogers," said Fancy, who as if in a moment had
recovered her composure. "If you want to know why, sir, and won't chat
about it, I don't mind tellin' you."

"You make me curious, little maid: that I'll own."

"'Tis simple enough, too," said she. "He's had a stroke, an' he's goin
to hell."

"Eh? . . . I don't see--"

"He's goin' to hell," she repeated with a nod as over a matter that
admitted no dispute.

"Well, but dang it all!" protested Captain Cai after a pause,
"we'll allow as he's goin' there, for the sake of argyment. Is that why
you're tendin' on him so careful?"

"You mustn't think," answered the child, "that I'm doin' it out o' pity
altogether. There's something terrible fascinatin' about a man in that
position."

CHAPTER IV.

VOICES IN THE TWILIGHT.

"I don't see anything immodest in it," said Mrs Bosenna looking up.
She was on her knees and had just finished pressing the earth about the
roots of a small rose-bush. "The house is mine, and naturally I am
curious to know something about my tenant."

Dinah, her middle-aged maid, who had been holding the bush upright and
steady, answered this challenge with a short sniff. "He don't seem over
curious, for his part, about _you_." She, too, glanced upward and
toward the house, the upper storey alone of which, from where they
stood, was visible above the spikes of a green palisade. A roadway
divided the house from the garden, which descended to the harbour-cliff
in a series of tiny terraces. "They've been pokin' around indoors this
hour and more."

"You don't suppose he caught sight of us?"

"Maybe not; but Tabb's child did. That girl 've a-got eyes like
niddles. If he don't come down t