You mustn't give way to the blues. It's true you haven't got
as much to leave to Polly when you slip your cable as you once had; but
you have scraped together a little these few years past, and there's
lots of work in you yet, old boy. Besides, it's His way of ordering
events, and that way _must_ be right, whatever it appears to me. Why,
Samson, for all your preaching to others, your own faith isn't as big as
a grain of mustard seed. Ah! Polly, you're a woman now a'most--and a
beauty, I'll be bound. I wish you'd come though. You're not up to
time, young 'ooman. It's as well you've got one or two faults, just to
keep you in sympathy with other mortals. Ah, here you come."

He hastened to answer a double knock at the door, and checked himself,
not a moment too soon, from giving a warm embrace to the postman. Under
a strong impulse to knock the man down he took a letter from him, flung
it on the table, and shut the door. After pacing the room for some time
impatiently he sat down, opened the letter, and read it aloud. It ran
thus:--

"Sir--Having been for some years past engaged in diving operations at
the wreck of the _Rainbow_--lost off the coast of Cornwall in 18
hundred and something, I write to say that I have recovered a large
chest of gold with your name on the inside of it, and that of a man
named Simon O'Rook. Most of the gold recovered from the _Rainbow_ has
been scattered about, but in all cases when ownership could be proved,
I have handed over the property. If you can give such an account of
the contents of the chest referred to as shall satisfy me that it is
yours, the part of its contents which belongs to you shall be
restored.

"I would feel obliged if you could give me any clew to the whereabouts
of O'Rook.--I am, etcetera."

"The whereabouts of O'Rook!" cried the captain, starting up and gazing
at the letter; "why, he's my own first mate, an' close alongside at this
good hour!"

"True for ye," cried a man outside the window, as he flattened his nose
against the glass, "an is it polite to kape yer own first mate rappin'
the skin off his knuckles at the door?"

The captain at once let in his follower, and showed him the letter. His
surprise may be better imagined than described.

"But d'ee think it's true, cap'n?"

"I haven't a doubt of it, but we can settle that to-morrow by a visit to
the writer of the letter."

"That's true," said O'Rook; "which o' the bo