lowering her voice slightly--"would you believe that
they all say he was wild and wicked and dissipated? And why? Fancy! Just
because he didn't care to stay at home and shoot and hunt and race and
make debts, as heirs usually do. No, he wanted to see the world and do
something for himself. Why, when he was quite young, he could manage a
boat like any sailor. Dornton Hall, their place, is on the coast, you
know, and they say that, just for adventure's sake, after he went away,
he shipped as first mate somewhere over here on the Pacific, and made
two or three voyages. You know--don't you?--and how every one was
shocked at such conduct in the heir."

Her face was so girlishly animated, with such sparkle of eye and
responsive color, that he could hardly reconcile it with her first
restraint or with his accepted traditions of her unemotional race, or,
indeed, with her relationship to the principal guest. His latent feeling
of gratitude to the dead man warmed under the young girl's voice.

"It's so dreadful to think of him as drowned, you know, though even
that they put against him," she went on hurriedly, "for they say he
was probably drowned in some drunken fit--fell through the wharf or
something shocking and awful--worse than suicide. But"--she turned her
frank young eyes upon him again--"YOU saw him on the wharf that night,
and you could tell how he looked."

"He was as sober as I was," returned Randolph indignantly, as he
recalled the incident of the flask and the dead man's caution. From
recalling it to repeating it followed naturally, and he presently
related the whole story of his meeting with Captain Dornton to the
brightly interested eyes beside him. When he had finished, she leaned
toward him in girlish confidence, and said:--

"Yes; but EVEN THAT they tell to show how intoxicated be must have been
to have given up his portmanteau to an utter stranger like you." She
stopped, colored, and yet, reflecting his own half smile, she added:
"You know what I mean. For they all agree how nice it was of you not to
take any advantage of his condition, and Dingwall said your honesty and
faithfulness struck Revelstoke so much that he made a place for you at
the bank. Now I think," she continued, with delightful naivete, "it was
a proof of poor Jack's BEING PERFECTLY SOBER, that he knew whom he was
trusting, and saw just what you were, at once. There! But I suppose you
must not talk to me any longer, but must make yourself a