together. A month afterwards I was taken off by a passing schooner and
landed safe at Sydney."

Mr. Chalk stopped, and mechanically picking up the pieces of his pipe
placed them on the table.

"Suppose that you had heard afterwards that the things had been stolen?"
he remarked.

"If I had, then I should have given information, I think," said the
other. "It all depends."

"Ah! but how could you have found them again?" inquired Mr. Chalk, with
the air of one propounding a poser.

[Illustration: "'How could you have found them again?' inquired Mr.
Chalk, with the air of one propounding a poser."]

"With my map," said the captain, slowly. "Before I left I made a map of
the island and got its position from the schooner that picked me up; but
I never heard a word from that day to this."

"Could you find them now?" said Mr. Chalk.

"Why not?" said the captain, with a short laugh. "The island hasn't run
away."

He rose as he spoke and, tossing the fragments of his visitor's pipe into
the fireplace, invited him to take a turn in the garden. Mr. Chalk,
after a feeble attempt to discuss the matter further, reluctantly obeyed.

CHAPTER III

Mr. Chalk, with his mind full of the story he had just heard, walked
homewards like a man in a dream. The air was fragrant with spring and
the scent of lilac revived memories almost forgotten. It took him back
forty years, and showed him a small boy treading the same road, passing
the same houses. Nothing had changed so much as the small boy himself;
nothing had been so unlike the life he had pictured as the life he had
led. Even the blamelessness of the latter yielded no comfort; it
savoured of a lack of spirit.

[Illustration: "A small boy treading the same road."]

His mind was still busy with the past when he reached home. Mrs. Chalk,
a woman of imposing appearance, who was sitting by the window at
needlework, looked up sharply at his entrance. Before she spoke he had a
dim idea that she was excited about something.

"I've got her," she said, triumphantly.

"Oh!" said Mr. Chalk.

"She didn't want to come at first," said Mrs. Chalk; "she'd half promised
to go to Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris had heard of her through Harris, the
grocer, and he only knew she was out of a place by accident. He--"

Her words fell on deaf ears. Mr. Chalk, gazing through the window, heard
without comprehending a long account of the capture of a new housemaid,
which, slightly a