with scuttling the _Proserpine,_ and asked him whether that money had
not been the bribe. But Joe was obdurate. "I never split on a friend,"
said he. "And you have nobody to blame but yourself, you wouldn't splice
without 2,000 pounds. I loved you, and I got it how I could. D'ye think a
poor fellow like me can make 2,000 pounds in a voyage by hauling in
ropes, and tying true-lovers' knots in the foretop?"

Nancy had her answer ready, but this remembrance pricked her own
conscience and paved the way to a reconciliation. Nancy had no high-flown
notions. She loved money, but it must be got without palpable dishonesty;
_per contra,_ she was not going to denounce her sweetheart, but then
again she would not marry him so long as he differed with her about the
meaning of the eighth commandment.

This led to many arguments, some of them warm, some affectionate; and so
we leave Mr. Wylie under the slow but salutary influence of love and
unpretending probity. He continued to lodge next door. Nancy would only
receive him as a visitor.

CHAPTER LXVII.

HELEN had complained to Arthur, of all people, that she was watched and
followed; she even asked him whether that was not the act of some enemy.
Arthur smiled, and said: "Take my word for it, it is only some foolish
admirer of your beauty; he wants to know your habits, in hopes of falling
in with you; you had better let me go out with you for the next month or
so; that sort of thing will soon die away."

As a necessary consequence of this injudicious revelation, Helen was
watched with greater skill and subtlety, and upon a plan well calculated
to disarm suspicion; a spy watched the door, and by a signal
unintelligible to any but his confederate, whom Helen could not possibly
see, set the latter on her track. They kept this game up unobserved for
several days, but learned nothing, for Helen was at a standstill. At last
they got caught, and by a truly feminine stroke of observation. A showily
dressed man peeped into a shop where Helen was buying gloves.

With one glance of her woman's eye she recognized a large breast-pin in
the worst possible taste; thence her eye went up and recognized the
features of her seedy follower, though he was now dressed up to the nine.
She withdrew her eye directly, completed her purchase, and went home,
brooding defense and vengeance.

That evening she dined with a lady who had a large acquaintance with
lawyers, and it so happened that Mr. Toll