answer to a question asked by one of the ladies, Stumpy related more
fully the particulars of Joel Wormbury's departure from Rockhaven.

"About six months before my father went off for the last time, he
returned to Gloucester from a fishing trip to the Georges," continued
Stumpy. "He expected to go again in a few weeks; so he left his chest in
Gloucester. His Bible was in that chest; but, as he found work coopering
at home, he did not go again till he left after the fight. In his letter
to my mother, he said he had got his chest, and that he had the Bible
all right. He wrote, too, that he meant to read it more than he had ever
done before, and not use it to scribble in. That was the last letter we
ever got from father. We heard that he had gone out to attend to the
trawls, and was lost in a fog, not being able to find his way back to
the vessel. Of course we hadn't any doubt that he was dead, after we
got a letter from the captain of the schooner in which my father sailed.
That's all I know about it."

"But how came he in Havana?" asked Mr. Hamilton.

"That's more than I know, sir," answered Stumpy.

"Harvey Barth could not have known anything about Joel Wormbury," added
Leopold; "and he wrote his diary, it appears on the very day the Waldo
was lost."

"There can be no doubt that Wallbridge and Joel Wormbury were one and
the same person," said Mr. Hamilton. "The name which Harvey Barth found
on the paper, the initials, on his valise, the name on the shirt, and
written forty times in the Bible, fully establish the fact in my mind."

"And in mine, too," said Leopold. "Stumpy, the gold is yours, and I will
give it to you whenever you are ready to take it."

"This is a go!" exclaimed Stumpy, with a broad grin on his brown face.
"We need the money bad enough; and my mother will jump up six feet when
she hears the news. Somebody else won't feel good about it, I'll bet."

Stumpy did not explain to whom the last remark related; but he
experienced the most lively satisfaction when he thought of the pleasure
it would afford him to see his mother tender the seven hundred dollars
in payment of the mortgage note. It occurred to him then that the
business ought not to be postponed a single day, for Squire Moses had
announced his intention of foreclosing the mortgage at once.

"How much money is there in the bag?" asked the merchant.

"Twelve hundred dollars in gold," replied Leopold; "and the diary says
Joel Wormbury saved