--ye-es, it's Willum's, ain't it?"

"The same pot-hooks and hangers _precisely_!" said Emma, "are they not?
Oh!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms round the Captain's neck and
kissing him, "uncle William, how _could_ you deceive us so?"

The Captain, to use his own expressions, was taken aback--fairly brought
up all standin'.

It had never occurred to his innocent mind that he should commit himself
so simply. He felt an unconquerable objection to expressions of
gratitude, and perceiving, with deep foresight that such were impending,
his first impulse was to rise and fly, but Emma's kiss made him change
his mind. He returned it in kind but not in degree, for it caused the
bower to resound as with a pistol shot.

"Oh! wot a cracker, ain't it just? you're a nice man, ain't you, to go
poachin' on other fellers--"

The Captain seized his opportunity, he broke from Emma and dashed wildly
at the spider, who incontinently fled down the conduit for coals,
cheering with the fury of a victorious Ashantee chief!

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE LAST.

Humbly confessing to Emma Gray that he had no talent whatever for
plotting, Captain Wopper went off with a deprecatory expression of
countenance to reveal himself to Mrs Roby. Great was his anxiety. He
entered her presence like a guilty thing. If, however, his anxiety was
great, his surprise and consternation were greater when she received his
revelation with tears, and for some time refused to be comforted!

The workings of the human mind are wonderful. Sometimes they are, as
the Captain said, bamboozling. If analysed it might have been
discovered that, apart altogether from the shock of unexpectedness and
the strain on her credulity, poor Mrs Roby suffered--without clearly
understanding it--from a double loss. She had learned to love Captain
Wopper for his own sake, and now Captain Wopper was lost to her in
William Stout! On the other hand William, her darling, her smooth-faced
chubby boy, was lost to her for ever in the hairy savage Captain Wopper!
It was perplexing as well as heart-rending. Captain Wopper was gone,
because, properly, there was no such being in existence. William Stout
was gone because he would never write to her any more, and could never
more return to her from California!

It was of no use that the Captain expressed the deepest contrition for
the deception he had practised, urging that he had done it "for the
best;" the old woman only wept th