ou don't tell me 'twas yours!" exclaimed Fancy, catching at the
sudden surmise written on Cai's face.

"Why not? . . . If he treated 'Bias that way? Sure enough," said Cai.
"I took him a hundred pounds to invest for me, about that time."

"Did he pay you a dividend this last half-year?"

"To be sure--seven pound, eight-an'-four."

"That was on the _Saltypool_," Fancy nodded. "And oh! Cap'n Hocken, I
am so sorry! but that hundred pound o' yours is at the bottom of the
sea."

"Well, my dear," said Cai after a pause, pulling a wry face, "to do your
master justice, he warned me 'twas a risk. There's naught to do but pay
up un' look pleasant, I reckon. 'Twon't break me."

"Cut the loss, you mean. The shares was paid up in full, and there
can't be no call."

"You're knowledgeable, missy: and yet you're wrong this time, as it
happens. For (I may tell you privately) the money didn' belong to me,
but to Mrs Bosenna, who asked me to invest it for her."

"Oh!--and Cap'n Hunken's hundred too?"

Cai reached a hand to the mantelpiece for the tobacco-jar, filled a pipe
very deliberately, lit it, and drawing a chair up to the table, seated
himself in face of her.

"I shouldn't wonder," said he, resting both arms on the table and eyeing
her across a cloud of tobacco-smoke. "Though I don't understand what
she--I mean, I don't understand what the game was."

"Me either," agreed the child, musing. "No hurry, though: I'll be a
widow some day, please God--which is mor'n _you_ can hope. But now we
get to the point: an' the point is, you can pay the woman up.
Cap'n Hunken can't."

"Why not?"

"He don't know it yet, but he can't."

"So you said: an' Why not? I ask. Within a thousand pound 'Bias owns as
much as I do."

The child stood up, pulled her chair across to the table, and reseating
herself, gazed steadily across at him through the tobacco-smoke.

"Where d'ye keep your bonds an' such like?" she asked.

"In my strong box, for the most part: two or three in the skivet of my
sea-chest."

"You got 'em all?"

"All. That's to say all except the paper for this hundred pounds, which
'twas agreed Rogers should keep."

"You're a lucky man. . . . Where did Cap'n Hunken keep his?"

"Darn'd if I know. Somewheres about. He was always a bit careless over
his securities--and so I've told him a dozen times,"

"When did you tell him last?"

This was a facer, and it made Cai blink. "We haven't discussed these
thi