d the wind over her port quarter, and the boat tore
through the water as if she intended to show her new skipper what she
could do. But Donald paid little attention to the speed of the Juno, for
his attention was wholly absorbed by the remarkable events of the
morning. Captain Shivernock had given him sixty dollars in payment
nominally for the slight service rendered him. But then, the strange man
had given a poor laborer a hundred dollars for stopping his horse, when
the animal leisurely walked towards home from the store where the owner
had left him. Again, he had given a negro sailor a fifty-dollar bill
for sculling him across the river. He had rewarded a small boy with a
ten-dollar bill for bringing him a despatch from the telegraph office.
When the woman who went to his house to do the washing was taken sick,
and was not able to work for three months, he regularly called at her
rooms every Monday morning and gave her ten dollars, which was three
times as much as she ever earned in the same time.

Remembering these instances of the captain's bounty, Donald had no doubt
about the ownership of the sixty dollars in his pocket. The money was
his own; but how had he earned it? Was he paid to keep his tongue still,
or simply for the service performed? If for his silence, what had the
captain done which made him desire to conceal the fact that he had been
to the island? The strange man had explicitly denied having killed,
robbed, or stolen from anybody. All the skipper could make of it was,
that his desire for silence was only a whim of the captain, and he was
entirely willing to accommodate him. If there had been any mischief done
on the island, he should hear of it; and in that event he would take
counsel of some one older and wiser than himself. Then he tried to
satisfy himself as to why the captain had walked at least three miles to
Turtle Head, instead of waiting till the tide floated the Juno. This
appeared to be also a whim of the strange man. People in the city used
to say it was no use to ask the reason for anything that Captain
Shivernock did. His motive in giving Donald sixty dollars and his boat,
which would sell readily for three hundred dollars, and had cost over
five hundred, was utterly unaccountable.

Donald was determined not to do anything wrong, and if the captain had
committed any evil deed, he fully intended to expose him; but he meant
to keep still until he learned that the evil deed had been done. T