The skipper and several men of the schooner came ashore with Caius.
There was a great bustle as soon as they reached the small wharf because
of what they had to tell. It was apparent from all that was told, and
all the replies that were made, that no shadow of suspicion was to fall
upon O'Shea. Why should it? He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge
against Le Maitre, whose death had been evidently an accident.

A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came
down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him.
When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official
personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times
in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder
how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt. He
found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see
any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her
husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within
sight of her house. "Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus
saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.

Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this
first mail of the year. He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out
of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to
walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place.
He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high
black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly. He had not opened his
letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.

The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good
husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when
necessary, with a good conscience. Had O'Shea a good conscience now?
Would he continue to be in all respects the man he had been, and the
staunch friend of Josephine? In his heart Caius believed that Le Maitre
was murdered; but he had no evidence to prove it--nothing whatever but
what O'Shea's wife had said to him that day she was hanging out her
linen, and such talk occurs in many a household, and nothing comes of
it.

Now Josephine was free. "What a blessing!" He used the common idiom to
himself, and then wondered at it. Could one man's crime be another man's
blessing? He found himself, out of love for Josephine, wondering
concerning the mat