indeed, a
letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, the near
presence of his host rendered difficult. For it ran as follows:--

"DEAR SLEIGHT,

"As I found I couldn't get a chance to make any examination of the ship
except as occasion offered, I just went in to rent lodgings in her from
the God-forsaken old ass who owns her, and here I am a tenant for two
months. I contracted for that time in case the old fool should sell
out to some one else before. Except that she's cut up a little between
decks by the partitions for lofts that that Pike County idiot has put
into her, she looks but little changed, and her FORE-HOLD, as far as I
can judge, is intact. It seems that Nott bought her just as she
stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn't here when she broke
cargo. If anybody else had bought her but this cursed Missourian, who
hasn't got the hayseed out of his hair, I might have found out
something from him, and saved myself this kind of fooling, which isn't
in my line. If I could get possession of a loft on the main deck, well
forward, just over the fore-hold, I could satisfy myself in a few
hours, but the loft is rented by that crazy Frenchman who parades
Montgomery Street every afternoon, and though old Pike County wants to
turn him out, I'm afraid I can't get it for a week to come.

"If anything should happen to me, just you waltz down here and corral
my things at once, for this old frontier pirate has a way of
confiscating his lodgers' trunks.

"Yours,
DICK."

III

If Mr. Renshaw indulged in any further curiosity regarding the interior
of the Pontiac, he did not make his active researches manifest to
Rosey. Nor, in spite of her father's invitation, did he again approach
the galley--a fact which gave her her first vague impression in his
favor. He seemed also to avoid the various advances which Mr. Nott
appeared impelled to make, whenever they met in the passage, but did so
without seemingly avoiding HER, and marked his half contemptuous
indifference to the elder Nott by an increase of respect to the young
girl. She would have liked to ask him something about ships, and was
sure his conversation would have been more interesting than that of old
Captain Bower, to whose cabin he had succeeded, who had once told her a
ship was the "devil's hen-coop." She would have liked also to explain
to him that she was not in the habit of wearing a purple bonnet. But
her thoughts were