ou remind me of your poor dear mother.
The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my
maternal grandfather."

"How did you come by it?" she asked, suddenly.

"My dear creature, I have just told you," remonstrated the captain. "We
all come by it from my maternal grandfather."

"How did you come by that handbill?" she repeated, passionately.

"I beg ten thousand pardons! My head was running on the family
spirit.--How did I come by it? Briefly thus." Here Captain Wragge
entered on his personal statement; taking his customary vocal exercise
through the longest words of the English language, with the highest
elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare occasion, nothing to gain by
concealment, he departed from his ordinary habits, and, with the utmost
amazement at the novelty of his own situation, permitted himself to tell
the unmitigated truth.

The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled Captain
Wragge's anticipations in relating it. She was not startled; she was not
irritated; she showed no disposition to cast herself on his mercy, and
to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the face; and all she
said, when he had neatly rounded his last sentence, was--"Go on."

"Go on?" repeated the captain. "Shocked to disappoint you, I am sure;
but the fact is, I have done."

"No, you have not," she rejoined; "you have left out the end of your
story. The end of it is, you came here to look for me; and you mean to
earn the fifty pounds reward."

Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge that for the
moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward truths of all sorts
far too often to be permanently disconcerted by them. Before Magdalen
could pursue her advantage, the vagabond had recovered his balance:
Wragge was himself again.

"Smart," said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming with his
umbrella on the pavement. "Some men might take it seriously. I'm not
easily offended. Try again."

Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute
perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience
among people who possessed a common sense of honor, and a common
responsibility of social position. She had hitherto seen nothing but
the successful human product from the great manufactory of Civilization.
Here was one of the failures, and, with all her quickness, she was
puzzled how to deal with it.

"Pardon me for returning to the subje