and leave me alone
in the world. He once made you the guardian of all that treasure, and now
he considers you as my guardian. You did not desert the first trust, and
I am sorry to think you want to desert the other."

"That's all very fine," said Ralph. "You blow hot and you blow cold at
the same time. When you want me to keep quiet and do what I am told, you
tell me I am not of age, and that you are my guardian; and when you want
me to stay here and make myself useful, you tell me I am wonderfully
trusty, and that I must be your guardian."

Edna smiled. "That is pretty good reasoning," she said, "but there isn't
any reasoning needed in this case. No matter what Captain Horn may say or
do, I would not let you go away from me."

Ralph sat down again. "There is some sense in what you say," he said. "If
the captain should come to grief, and I were with him, we would both be
gone. Then you would have nobody left to you. But that does not entirely
clear him. Even if he thought I ought not to go with him, he ought to
have said something about it, and put in a word or so about his being
sorry. Is there any more of the letter?"

"Yes," said Edna, "there is more of it," and she began to read again:

"'I intended to stop here and give you the rest of the matter in another
letter, but now, as I have a good chance to write, I think it is better
to keep on, although this letter is already as long as the pay-roll of
the navy. When I told Shirley about the gold, he made a bounce pretty
nearly as big as the others, but this time I had him in a stout
arm-chair, and he did no damage. He had in his pocket one of the gold
bars he spoke of, and I had one of mine in my trunk, and when we put them
together they were as like as two peas. What I told him dazed him at
first, and he did not seem properly to understand what it all meant, but,
after a little, a fair view of it came to him, and for hours we talked
over the matter. Who the man was who had gone there after we left did not
matter, for he could never come hack again.

"'We decided that what we should do was to go and get that gold as soon
as possible, and Shirley agreed to go with me. He believed we could trust
Burke to join us, and, with my four black men,--who have really become
good sailors,--we would have a crew of seven men altogether, with which
we could work a fair-sized brig to Havre or some other French port.
Before he went away our business was settled. He agreed to go w