seback, I should think?"

"Oh, I begin to understand you, Captain Cuffe. Why, if the truth must be
said, we came in the lugger the Few-Folly."

"I supposed as much. And when you went to visit this aunt where did you
leave the lugger?"

"We didn't leave her at all, sir; being under her canvas, our feet were
no sooner in the boat and the line cast off than she left us as if we
had been stuck up like a tree on dry ground."

"Where did this happen?"

"Afloat, of course, Captain Cuffe; such a thing would hardly come to
pass ashore."

"All that I understand; but you say the prisoner left his vessel in
order to visit an aunt of the young woman's; thence he went into the Bay
for the sole purpose of finding the young woman herself. Now, this is an
important fact, as it concerns the prisoner's motives and may affect his
life. The court must act with all the facts before it; as a
commencement, tell us where Raoul Yvard left his lugger to go on yonder
headland."

"I do not think, Captain Cuffe, you've got the story exactly right.
Captain Rule didn't go on the mountain, a'ter all, so much to see the
aunt as to see the niece at the aunt's dwelling; if one would eend
right in a story, he must begin right."

"I left le Feu-Follet, Monsieur le Capitaine," Raoul calmly observed,
"not two cables' length from the very spot where your own ship is now
lying; but it was at an hour of the night when the good people of Capri
were asleep, and they knew nothing of our visit. You see the lugger is
no longer here."

"And do you confirm this story under the solemnity of your oath?"
demanded Cuffe of Ithuel, little imagining how easy it was to the
witness to confirm anything he saw fit in the way he mentioned.

"Sartain; every word is true, gentlemen," answered Ithuel. "It was not
more than a cable's length from this very spot, according to my
judgment."

"And where is the lugger now?" asked Cuffe, betraying the drift of all
his questions in his eagerness to learn more.

Ithuel was not to be led on so hurriedly or so blindly. Affecting a
girlish sort of coyness, he answered, simpering:

"Why, Captain Cuffe, I cannot think of answering a question like that
under the solemnity of an oath, as you call it. No one can know where
the little Folly is but them that's in her."

Cuffe was a little disconcerted at the answer, while Lyon smiled
ironically; the latter then took upon himself the office of
cross-examining, with an opinion of his