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 down-stairs.

But it was harder navigation below-stairs than above. The instant they
set foot in the parlour the quick, womanly eye detected that there was
something wrong. Kitty exclaimed, frightened, as she ran to her lover's
side, "Alfred! What's the matter?" Mrs. Raybrock cried out to the
captain, "Gracious! what have you done to my son to change him like this
all in a minute?" And the young widow--who was there with her work upon
her arm--was at first so agitated that she frightened the little girl she
held in her hand, who hid her face in her mother's skirts and screamed.
The captain, conscious of being held responsible for this domestic
change, contemplated it with quite a guilty expression of countenance,
and looked to the young fisherman to come to his rescue.