master was
considered no better than the man--if both behaved themselves, were
honest, and attended church on the Sabbath!

So I opened my heart to Ham as we sat with our backs against the
grain-chest, and told him all that had occurred on the Wavecrest as
she drifted into the harbor that evening, and what had followed when I
brought Paul Downes home with his hands tied behind his back.

"But what is puzzling me, Ham," I said, in conclusion, looking sideways
into his shrewdly puckered face, "is what those Downes meant by hinting
that there was something queer about father's death."

"Huh!" grunted Ham.

"What made that crazy Paul say he committed suicide, and that if he
hadn't we'd have been paupers?"

"Huh!" said Ham again.

"And why should such a foolish remark," I added, "have frightened
mother? For that is what brought about her fainting fit, I verily
believe."

"Huh!" said the coachman for a third time, and then I got mad.

"Stop that, Ham!" I cried. "Don't you go about trying to mystify me. I
want to know what they meant. I intend to find out what they meant. If
you have any suspicion, tell it out."

"Well, Master Clint," he said gravely, "I don't blame you for being
angry."

"Or being puzzled, either?" I put in.

"No, sir; nor for being puzzled. And I'm some puzzled myself. But I
reckon Paul Downes was jest repeatin' what he'd heard his father say."

"That my poor father had to jump overboard from his dory, to save
himself from trouble and mother and I from poverty? Why, it's
preposterous!" I cried.

"So it is, sir," Ham assured me. "So it is. And nobody believes
it--nobody that's got anything inside their heads but sawdust."

I started and grasped him by the arm. "Do you mean," I said, "that there
_was_ any such story told when my father was lost at sea?"

"Well, sir, you know that an oak-ball will smoke when you bust it atwixt
your fingers--but there ain't no fire in it," grunted Ham,
philosophically. "Folk says that there can't be smoke without some fire.
The oak-ball disproves it. And it's so with gossip. Gossip is the only
thing that don't really need a beginning. It's hatched without the sign
of an egg----"

"Oh, hang your platitudes, Ham!" I cried. "Do you mean that there ever
_was_ such a story circulated?"

"Well, sir----"

"There was!" I cried, horrified.

"It come about in this way," began Ham, calmly and quietly. And his
speaking so soon brought me to a calmer mind. "It was y