child's play to him. In each town he had an accomplice who dare not, if
he would, betray him.

Captain Wolf was also a miser. He loved gold as none but misers do. To
him it was wife, child and heaven all in one, and its chink as he
counted it was the sweetest of music. For four years he played his role
and continually reaped rich reward, and then he resolved to quit. But,
true to his nature, before doing so he decided to play the hyena. He had
for all these years cheated the law; now he planned to cheat those who
aided him. To this end he set a trap. When a fox sets a trap he sets it
well. Wolf began by circulating an alluring story of a chance to share
in the distribution of a large cargo of contraband spirits, provided
those who could so share would buy a _pro rata_ large amount at reduced
price. Having thus set and baited his trap, he proceeded to spring it.
He had, in his wanderings, obtained a formula for the manufacture of
spurious brandy. All that was required was a few cheap chemicals and
water. He purchased the former; on Pocket Island there was a spring that
furnished the latter. Feeling sure that those whom he had duped would
not dare to expose him, he yet acted cautiously and began his cheating
at widely separated points. He had usually disposed of small lots at a
time. He doubled and sometimes trebled these, and the hoard of silver
and gold behind the rocking stone grew rapidly. Trip after trip he made
to the various ports he had been accustomed to visit, never calling at
the same one twice, and at each springing his well-set trap, pocketing
his almost stolen money and disappearing, leaving behind him curses and
threats of revenge. When all whom he could thus dupe were robbed by this
wily Jew and he had secured all the profit they, as his accomplices, had
made, Captain Wolf and the Sea Fox sailed away to his unknown lair at
Pocket Island, and were never heard of afterward.

CHAPTER III.

NEMESIS.

While Captain Wolf was carrying out his scheme to rob his accomplices in
smuggling, he was planning a still more despicable act, and that was to
take his hoard of money, stow all valuables on the sloop, sail to a Nova
Scotia port, and when near it, to kill the Indian, sell the Sea Fox and
cross the ocean.

There were several weighty reasons for this. In the first place, those
bags of coin behind the rocking stone weighed on his mind. He was a
miser, and never before had he so much wealth he could call