ately, the two could not avoid noticing it.

"See here," said Captain Bergen, one evening while sitting in the
cabin with the child on his knee, "I want you to try and think hard
and answer me all the questions I ask you. Will you?"

"Of course I will, if you don't ask too hard ones."

"Well, I will be easy as I can. You have told me all about the big
steamer that you were on when we found you, and you said that you
lived with your Uncle Con in San Francisco, and that it was he and
your Aunt Jemima that put you on board."

"I didn't say any such thing!" indignantly protested Inez. "I haven't
got any Aunt Jemima--it was my Aunt Letitia."

The captain and mate smiled, for a little piece of strategy had
succeeded. They had never before got the girl to give the name of her
aunt, though she mentioned that of her uncle. But she now spoke it,
her memory refreshed by the slight teasing to which she was
subjected.

"That's very good. I'm glad to learn that your uncle and aunt had two
such pretty names as Con and Letitia Bumblebee."

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" demanded Inez, turning upon him with
flashing eyes. "I never heard of such a funny name as that."

"I beg pardon. What, then, is their name?"

The little head was bent and the fair brow wrinkled with thought. She
had tried the same thing before, though it must be believed that she
could not have tried very hard, or she would not have failed to
remember the name of those with whom she lived but a short time
before. But she used her brain to its utmost now, and it did not take
her long to solve the question. In a few seconds she looked up and
laughed.

"Of course I know their name. It was Hermann, though he sometimes
called himself George Smith."

"The other sounds German," remarked Storms, in a lower voice. "Go
ahead and get all you can from her."

"How long did you live with them?"

"Let me see," said Inez, as she turned her lustrous blue eyes toward
the roof of the cabin, as if she expected to read the answer there. "I
guess it was about two--three hundred years."

She was in earnest, and Storms observed:

"She must be a little off on that; but take another tack."

The captain did so.

"Do you remember living with any one excepting your Uncle George and
Aunt Letitia?"

Inez thought hard again, and replied, after a few seconds:

"I don't know. Sometimes he was Uncle George and sometimes Uncle Con.
We lived in the city a good while, where there