nin'."

"An', once there, who knows where he's got mixed? . . . He'll go the
round o' the Fleet, maybe. Oh, my word, an' the ship that broaches
him!"

Bill Adams opened and shut his mouth quickly, like a fish ashore.

"They'll reckon they've got a lucky-bag," he said weakly.

"An' Wilkins paid off with the rest, an' no address, even if he could
help--which I doubt."

"Eh? I got a note from Wilkins, as it happens." Bill Adams took off
his tarpaulin hat, and extracted a paper from the lining of the
crown. "He passed it down to me this mornin' as I pushed off from
the ship. Said I was to keep it, an' maybe I'd find it useful.
I wondered what he meant at the time, me takin' no particular truck
with pursers ashore. . . . It crossed my mind as I'd heard he meant
to get married, and maybe he wanted me to stand best man at the
weddin'. W'ich I didn' open the note at the time; not likin' to
refuse him, after he'd behaved so well to me."

"Pass it over," commanded Mr. Jope. He took the paper and unfolded
it, but either the light was dim within the store, or the handwriting
hard to decipher. "Would your Reverence read it out for us?"

Parson Spettigew carried the paper to the doorway. He read its
contents aloud, and slowly:

To Mr. Bill Adams,

Capt. of the Fore-top, H.M.S. _Vesuvius_.

Sir,--It was a dummy Capt. Crang buried. We cast the late E.
Tonkin overboard the second night in lat. 46/30, long. 7/15, or
thereabouts. By which time the feeling aboard had cooled down
and it seemed a waste of good spirit. The rum you paid for is
good rum. Hoping that you and Mr. Jope will find a use for it,

Your obedient servant,
S. Wilkins.

There was a long pause, through which Mr. Adams could be heard
breathing hard.

"But what are we to do with it?" asked Mr. Jope, scratching his head
in perplexity.

"Drink it. Wot else?"

"But where?"

"Oh," said Mr. Adams, "anywhere!"

"That's all very well," replied his friend. "You never had no
property, an' don't know its burdens. We'll have to hire a house for
this, an' live there till it's finished."

II.

THE MULTIPLYING CELLAR.

St. Dilp by Tamar has altered little in a hundred years. As it
stands to-day, embowered in cherry-trees, so (or nearly so) it stood
on that warm afternoon in the early summer of 1807, when two
weather-tanned seamen o