ked on as they hoped to work on those
of others.

A considerable amount of the property of the gang, which they had not
time to remove, was seized when they left their chief stronghold and
place of rendezvous on the coast, where they had long defied the
vigilance of the revenue officers, and many of them were driven away
from the coast. The entrance to the cave from the sea was carefully
blocked up, so that no one could again undermine the Tower, and attempt
to play off such tricks on the inmates.

Mr Ludlow, accompanied by Stephen, rode over to the Tower to
congratulate his tenants on the recovery of their daughter. "I am very
glad to see the young lady back, and safe, and well; but," he added, "I
have a bone to pick with her. What do you think, captain? She has
actually been endeavouring to persuade my only son to go to sea, that he
may spend his life in searching for your poor boy, whom she asserts is
still alive in some island of the Pacific, either in consequence of
reading a child's book, or from some cock-and-bull story which she heard
from an old sailor one day, who was never afterwards to be found to
corroborate the truth of his narrative. I wish bygones to be bygones,
and I would rather not have alluded to the subject, but I really do not
know what powerful influence she may exert over him, though I cannot say
that at present he has any fancy for the undertaking; but I wish, at all
events, to nip the project in the bud."

As may be supposed, Captain Askew was not a little astonished at this
address, while he could not but be sensible of the want of feeling of
the man who could thus coldly speak of his long-lost son, that son who
had been banished in consequence of Mr Ludlow's own stern decree. "I
was not aware that my little Margery entertained any such notion," he
answered mildly. "Did she, I should have supposed that your son,
Stephen, however much she may esteem him as a friend, was the very last
person she would have selected for the scheme."

"Oh, the foolish boy lent her a book, a copy, I believe, of Defoe's
`Robinson Crusoe,' and as he describes a person living on an island for
a number of years by himself, she has taken it into her head that her
brother may have escaped shipwreck, and be still alive on one of the
many islands which I understand stud parts of the Pacific."

"I have only to repeat that my daughter has not mentioned the subject to
me, and I will undertake that she does not ind