lge timbers, unless they're
copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time
that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes
me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed
crooked; and when it's growed crooked it gits leaky, and no 'mount o'
tar and pitch kin stop it. Every twist the ship gives it opens the
seams, and the pumps is goin' all the time. When your timber is growed
right you kin all go to sleep and not a drop o' water'll git in. Your
sister Lucy ain't growed right. Maybe she kin help it and maybe she
can't, but she'll leak every time there comes a twist. See if she
don't."

But Jane never lost faith nor wavered in her trust. With the old-time
love strong upon her she continued to make excuses for this
thoughtless, irresponsible woman, so easily influenced. "It is Maria
Collins who has written the letter, and not Lucy," she kept saying to
herself. "Maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still
dominates her. The poor child's sufferings have hardened her heart and
destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong--that is all."

With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her
desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals. The
sheet blazed and fell into ashes.

"No one will ever know," she said with a sigh.

CHAPTER XIII

SCOOTSY'S EPITHET

Lying on Barnegat Beach, within sight of the House of Refuge and
Fogarty's cabin, was the hull of a sloop which had been whirled in one
night in a southeaster, with not a soul on board, riding the breakers
like a duck, and landing high and dry out of the hungry clutch of the
surf-dogs. She was light at the time and without ballast, and lay
stranded upright on her keel. All attempts by the beach-combers to
float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing
rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her. Only
the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its
bent keelson buried in the sand. This hulk little Tod Fogarty, aged
ten, had taken possession of; particularly the after-part of the hold,
over which he had placed a trusty henchman armed with a cutlass made
from the hoop of a fish barrel. The henchman--aged seven--wore
knee-trousers and a cap and answered to the name of Archie. The refuge
itself bore the title of "The Bandit's Home."

This new hulk had taken the place of the old schoone