"However! Enough of that! You spoke some brave words to me just now,
Captain Jorgan, and they shall not be spoken in vain. I have got to do
something. What I have got to do, before all other things, is to trace
out the meaning of this paper, for the sake of the Good Name that has no
one else to put it right. And still for the sake of the Good Name, and
my father's memory, not a word of this writing must be breathed to my
mother, or to Kitty, or to any human creature. You agree in this?"

"I don't know what they'll think of us below," said the captain, "but for
certain I can't oppose it. Now, as to tracing. How will you do?"

They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again carefully
puzzled out the whole of the writing.

"I make out that this would stand, if all the writing was here, 'Inquire
among the old men living there, for'--some one. Most like, you'll go to
this village named here?" said the captain, musing, with his finger on
the name.

"Yes! And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman, and--to be sure!--comes from
Lanrean."

"Does he?" said the captain quietly. "As I ain't acquainted with him,
who may _he_ be?"

"Mr. Tregarthen is Kitty's father."

"Ay, ay!" cried the captain. "Now you speak! Tregarthen knows this
village of Lanrean, then?"

"Beyond all doubt he does. I have often heard him mention it, as being
his native place. He knows it well."

"Stop half a moment," said the captain. "We want a name here. You could
ask Tregarthen (or if you couldn't I could) what names of old men he
remembers in his time in those diggings? Hey?"

"I can go straight to his cottage, and ask him now."

"Take me with you," said the captain, rising in a solid way that had a
most comfortable reliability in it, "and just a word more first. I have
knocked about harder than you, and have got along further than you. I
have had, all my sea-going life long, to keep my wits polished bright
with acid and friction, like the brass cases of the ship's instruments.
I'll keep you company on this expedition. Now you don't live by talking
any more than I do. Clench that hand of yours in this hand of mine, and
that's a speech on both sides."

Captain Jorgan took command of the expedition with that hearty shake. He
at once refolded the paper exactly as before, replaced it in the bottle,
put the stopper in, put the oilskin over the stopper, confided the whole
to Young Raybrock's keeping, and led the way dow