in a sentence. Despite all they had pieced together he, Code, was
still the man against whom the burden of circumstantial evidence
rested. Nat was, and always could go, scot free.

"Code, this is terrible!" she said. "But there may be a way out yet.
No man with the right on his side has ever failed to triumph, however
black things looked."

"But how?" he cried despairingly. "I have racked my brains for some
means of closing the net about him, but there seems no way."

"Now there is not," she returned, "but, Code, you can rest assured
that I will do everything I can."

"God bless you," he said, taking her hand; "you are the best friend a
man ever had."

CHAPTER XXVI

WETTING THEIR SALT

Pete Ellinwood, alone except for the cook, who sat peeling potatoes
just outside the galley, paced the quarter-deck of the _Charming
Lass_.

He seemed to be an older man than that night when, goaded beyond
endurance by the taunts of the big Frenchman, he had fought a fight
that would long be remembered in the streets of the roaring town of
St. Pierre.

He felt that he had broken his promise to Ma Schofield that he would
keep guard over her boy. Now, for all he knew, that boy was lying in
jail at St. Andrew's, or was perhaps defending his life in the
murderer's pen.

The night of the fight had been a wild one for Ellinwood.

At the cry of "Police!" the crowd had seemed to melt away from him
like the bank fog at the sweep of a breeze. A dozen comrades had
seized the prostrate Jean and hurried him away, and Pete, with the
instinct of self-preservation, had snatched up his clothes and dodged
down a dark alley toward the dirty drinking-shops along the
water-front.

There, as he dressed himself, he first asked the question, "Where is
Code?"

Then, in a frenzy of remorse, he returned to the street and began a
wild and fruitless search all night. Then he accidentally learned that
the _Nettie B._ had been in port two days and that her crew had been
ashore on the night of the fracas.

Sorrowful, bedraggled, and bruised, he rowed out to the _Charming
Lass_ just as the whole crew was setting out for shore to search for
Code and himself.

During the night the barrels of fresh bait had been lightered to the
_Lass_, and there was nothing for it but to make sail and get back on
the Banks as soon as possible, leaving Code to his fate but carrying
on the work he had begun.

In accordance with Code's instructions, Pete auto