landed the mate and seamen, as well as the two
brothers, at Bridge Town, in the island of Barbadoes, but from that day
to this I have never heard a word about them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry Higginson, some time before the Captain's yarn concluded, got up
from his seat and went to the side of our cabin schoolroom and stood
there, looking through a dead-light which was open to ventilate the
room. He had remembered that it was about the time of the moon's
rising, and went to watch it come up. As our salt tute finished, Harry
turned from his lookout, and, catching my eye, beckoned me to join him,
and so I did. Coming beside him, Harry pointed and whispered--for the
spell of the story still lingered over us, and no one seemed willing to
break it roughly--

"What do you make of that, Bob?"

The big mellow moon was right before us, and, as one would say, about
the height of a house, above the eastern horizon. Its light silvered a
path on the sea to us--a path that was bounded on one side by the bold,
dark rocks of the southern shore of the cape, and whose limit to our
right was as undefined as the undulating waters it was lost in. Across
the stretch of moonlight, and a half-mile from the wreck, I saw a lugger
heading for a point that made the southern side of a snug little cove
which afterwards got the name of "Smuggler's Cove." It was the sight of
that boat at such a time coming towards the shore of our rough cape that
caused Harry's question to me.

"Singular--very singular," I answered; "we must watch that craft."

Mr Clare called to us, "Boys, what are you whispering about over
there?"

We wanted to keep watch quietly by ourselves, on the discovery which
promised some interest, so we did not answer, and Walter at that moment
called on Mr Clare for his story.

"Well," said Mr Clare, "I promised a story as the only way of getting
Captain Mugford's. I bought a great deal cheaply, and must pay now. In
common honesty, therefore, I am bound to commence my story. I am afraid
that I cannot make it as interesting as Captain Mugford's, inasmuch as
his was about the sea, while mine relates to the land. However, I will
begin."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

MR. CLARE'S STORY.

The year before I left Canada, in the fall, as the autumn is called
there, I started with a number of other young men in our neighbourhood,
the county town of C---, to go about seventy-five