o advise her at every turn. Especially did she
complain that Mr. Hounsditch had been officious since I was heard from.

The tone of her letter hurt me a little. There seemed to be some idea
still in her mind that it was my reckless disposition more than the
crime of another, that had set me adrift in the Wavecrest. She spoke
of "Mr. Downes' great trouble" and of "poor Paul" as though they were
both to be pitied. Otherwise she did not touch on the topic of my having
been cut adrift by my cousin, or his emissaries.

It was from Ham Mayberry's letter I got the facts regarding my cousin
and his father. Lampton, the man at the boathouse, and Ham himself had
had their suspicions of what had become of me, and how the Wavecrest
had been swept away in the storm, before my letters from the Scarboro
were received. They had found the cut mooring cable.

Ham, too, had sounded the ne'er-do-wells who were my cousin's
companions, and after the house on the Neck was closed for the season,
and the Downeses had departed with my mother for Darringford House, the
old coachman had obtained a confession from the young scoundrels to the
effect that they had helped Paul nail me into my cabin and had seen him
cut the Wavecrest adrift.

At the time I was heard from, Ham put all the evidence into the hands of
Mr. Hounsditch, and the old lawyer had gone to the Downeses and
threatened procedure against Paul. Chester Downes had flown into a
violent passion with his son and had actually driven him out of his
house, and Paul had disappeared. Of course, Ham at the time of writing
knew nothing of what had become of Paul. There was a paragraph at the
end of Ham's letter that was explanatory, too, and I repeat it here:

"I don't know what you mean by your questions about Jim Carver--that was
his name. He was one of the three Carver boys--Bill and Jonas were as
straight as a chalk line; but Jim always was a little crooked. He worked
for the fish firm of Pallin & Thorpe, and I remember that he disappeared
with some of the cash from their safe about the time poor Dr. Webb was
drowned. Do you mean to say you have run across Jim Carver on board that
whaling bark? Folks hereabout thought Jim Carver was dead years ago."

So _that_ settled the mystery of the man I had come clear down here to
the Straits of Magellan to find--the man whom Captain Adoniram Tugg
knew as Professor Vose and who had met so terrible an end when the
savages had destroyed Tugg's headqu