ood. Did he tell you where he got the bill?" asked
Captain Patterdale, manifesting none of the emotion which agitated him.

"No, sir; he did not. I didn't ask him. If it makes any difference, I
will do so."

"It makes no difference whatever. It is all right, Mr. Leach."

The sail-maker folded up his receipt, and left the library. He went home
with eighty dollars in his pocket, entirely satisfied with himself, with
the nabob, and especially with the firm of Ramsay & Son. He did not care
a straw about the white cross of Denmark, so long as the bill was good.
Captain Patterdale was deeply interested in the bill which bore this
mark, and possibly he expected to conquer by this sign. He was not so
much interested in the bill because he had made a voyage up the Baltic
and seen the white cross there, as because he had seen it on a bill in
that tin box. He was not only interested, but he was anxious, for the
active member of the firm of Ramsay & Son seemed to be implicated in a
very unfortunate and criminal transaction.

More than once Captain Patterdale had observed the pleasant relations
between Don John and his fair daughter. As Nellie was a very pretty
girl, intelligent, well educated, and agreeable, and in due time would
be the heiress of a quarter or a half million, as the case might be, he
was rather particular in regard to the friendships she contracted with
the young gentlemen of the city. Possibly he did not approve the
intimacy between them. But whatever opinions he may have entertained in
regard to the equality of social relations between his daughter and the
future partner of her joys and sorrows, we must do him the justice to
say that he preferred honor and honesty to wealth and position in the
gentleman whom Nellie might choose for her life companion. The
suspicion, or rather the conviction, forced upon him by "the white cross
of Denmark," that Donald was neither honest nor honorable, was vastly
more painful than the fact that he was poor, and was the son of a mere
ship carpenter.

Certainly Nellie did like the young man, though, as she was hardly more
than a child, it might be a fancy that would pass away when she realized
the difference between the daughter of a nabob and the son of a ship
carpenter. While he was thinking of the subject, Nellie entered the
library, as she generally did when her father was alone there. She was
his only confidant in the house in the matter of the tin box, and he
determined t