is just as well as obvious. As a solitary man for ever
brooding on the past, I will not deny that I may have been led to
paint that past in colours other than its own. Indeed, it would be
little short of a miracle were this not so. A morbid soul--and I
will admit that mine is morbid--preying upon its recollections, and
nourished on that food alone, cannot hope to attain the sense of
proportion which is the proper gift of varied experience. I readily
grant, therefore, that the lights and shades on this picture may be
wrong, as judged by the ordinary eye, but I do claim them to be a
faithful reproduction of my own vision. As I look back I find them
absolutely truthful, nor can I give the lie to my own impressions in
the endeavour to write what shall seem true to the rest of the world.

This must be, therefore, my excuse for asking the reader to pass by
fourteen years and take up the tale far from Lantrig. But before I
plunge again into my story, it is right that I should briefly touch
on the chief events that occurred during this interval in my life.

They buried my father and mother in the same grave in Polkimbra
Churchyard. I remember now that crowds of fisher-folk lined the way
to their last resting-place, and a host, as it seemed to me, of
tear-stained faces watched the coffins laid in the earth. But all
else is a blurred picture to me, as, indeed, is the time for many a
long day after.

Colliver was never found. Captain Merrydew raised the hue and cry,
but the sailor Georgio Rhodojani was never seen again from the moment
when his evil face leered in through the window of Lantrig. A reward
was offered, and more than once Polkimbra was excited with the news
of his arrest, but it all came to nothing. Failing his capture,
Uncle Loveday was wisely silent on the subject of my father's Journal
and the secret of the Great Ruby. He had not been idle, however.
After long consultation with Aunt Elizabeth he posted off to Plymouth
to gain news of Lucy Railton and her daughter, but without success.
The "Welcome Home" still stood upon the Barbican, but the house was
in possession of new tenants, and neither they nor their landlord
could tell anything of the Railtons except that they had left
suddenly about two months before (that being the date of the wreck of
the _Belle Fortune_) after paying their rent to the end of the
Christmas quarter. The landlord could give no reasons for their
departure--for the house had