or to-night instead," he said, with more assurance than
he felt, "if I have to bleed the Governor to death. Be ready as last
night."

"But if there are questions meanwhile?" bleated Nuttall. He was a thin,
pale, small-featured, man with weak eyes that now blinked desperately.

"Answer as best you can. Use your wits, man. I can stay no longer." And
Peter went off to the apothecary for his pretexted drugs.

Within an hour of his going came an officer of the Secretary's to
Nuttall's miserable hovel. The seller of the boat had--as by law
required since the coming of the rebels-convict--duly reported the sale
at the Secretary's office, so that he might obtain the reimbursement
of the ten-pound surety into which every keeper of a small boat was
compelled to enter. The Secretary's office postponed this reimbursement
until it should have obtained confirmation of the transaction.

"We are informed that you have bought a wherry from Mr. Robert Farrell,"
said the officer.

"That is so," said Nuttall, who conceived that for him this was the end
of the world.

"You are in no haste, it seems, to declare the same at the Secretary's
office." The emissary had a proper bureaucratic haughtiness.

Nuttall's weak eyes blinked at a redoubled rate.

"To... to declare it?"

"Ye know it's the law."

"I... I didn't, may it please you."

"But it's in the proclamation published last January."

"I... I can't read, sir. I... I didn't know."

"Faugh!" The messenger withered him with his disdain.

"Well, now you're informed. See to it that you are at the Secretary's
office before noon with the ten pounds surety into which you are obliged
to enter."

The pompous officer departed, leaving Nuttall in a cold perspiration
despite the heat of the morning. He was thankful that the fellow had not
asked the question he most dreaded, which was how he, a debtor, should
come by the money to buy a wherry. But this he knew was only a respite.
The question would presently be asked of a certainty, and then hell
would open for him. He cursed the hour in which he had been such a fool
as to listen to Peter Blood's chatter of escape. He thought it very
likely that the whole plot would be discovered, and that he would
probably be hanged, or at least branded and sold into slavery like
those other damned rebels-convict, with whom he had been so mad as
to associate himself. If only he had the ten pounds for this
infernal surety, which until this moment had