this _is_ the point, Cap'n. He was coming back, you see. The _Lady
Nepean_ wasn't fit for much after the handling she'd had. She was going
for twelve hundred pounds: the Post Office didn't look for more. We got
her for eleven hundred, with the guns, and the repairs may have cost a
hundred and fifty; but you'll find the account-books in the cupboard
there. Father had a matter of five hundred laid by, and a little over."

Captain Seccombe removed his legs from the cabin-table, tilted his chair
forward and half rose in his seat.

"You _bought_ her?"

"That's what I'm telling you, sir; though father'd have put it much
clearer. You see, he laid it before the Lord; and then he laid it before
all of us. It preyed on his mind. My sister Susannah stood up and she
said, 'I reckon I'm the most respectably married of all of you, having a
farm of my own; but we can sell up, and all the world's a home to them
that fears the Lord. We can't stock up with American prisoners, but we
can go ourselves instead; and judging by the prisoners I've a-seen
brought in, Commodore Rodgers'll be glad to take us. What he does to us
is the Lord's affair.' That's what she said, sir. Of course, we kept it
quiet: we put it about that the _Lady Nepean_ was for Canada, and the
whole family going out for emigrants. This here gentleman we picked up
outside Falmouth; perhaps he've told you."

Captain Seccombe stared at me, and I at Captain Seccombe. Reuben Colenso
stood wringing his cap.

At length the American found breath enough to whistle. "I'll have to put
back to Boston about this, though it's money out of pocket. This here's
a matter for Commodore Bainbridge. Take a seat, Mr. Colenso."

"I was going to ask," said the prisoner simply, "if, before you put me
in irons, I might go on deck and look at father. It'll be only a moment,
sir."

"Yes, sir, you may. And if you can get the ladies to excuse me, I will
follow in a few minutes. I wish to pay him my respects. It's my
opinion," he added pensively, as the prisoner left the cabin--"it's my
opinion that the man's story is genu-wine."

He repeated the word, five minutes later, as we stood on the
quarter-deck beside the body. "A genu-wine man, sir, unless I am
mistaken."

Well, the question is one for casuists. In my travels I have learnt
this, that men are greater than governments; wiser sometimes, honester
always. Heaven deliver me from any such problem as killed this old
packet-captain! Between