and
closing the door gave way to some irritability of temper in his efforts
to light the lamp and adjust his writing materials. For his excuse to
Mr. Nott was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had, indeed, a
letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, the near
presence of his host rendered difficult. For it ran as follows:--

DEAR SLEIGHT: As I found I couldn't get a chance to make any
examination of the ship except as occasion offered, I just went in to
rent lodgings in her from the God-forsaken old ass who owns her, and
here I am a tenant for two months. I contracted for that time in case
the old fool should sell out to some one else before. Except that she's
cut up a little between decks by the partitions for lofts that that
Pike County idiot has put into her, she looks but little changed, and
her _fore-hold_, as far as I can judge, is intact. It seems that Nott
bought her just as she stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn't
here when she broke cargo. If anybody else had bought her but this
cursed Missourian, who hasn't got the hayseed out of his hair, I might
have found out something from him, and saved myself this kind of
fooling, which isn't in my line. If I could get possession of a loft on
the main deck, well forward, just over the fore-hold, I could satisfy
myself in a few hours, but the loft is rented by that crazy Frenchman
who parades Montgomery Street every afternoon, and though old Pike
County wants to turn him out, I'm afraid I can't get it for a week to
come.

If anything should happen to me, just you waltz down here and corral my
things at once, for this old frontier pirate has a way of confiscating
his lodgers' trunks.

Yours, DICK.

III.

If Mr. Renshaw indulged in any further curiosity regarding the interior
of the Pontiac, he did not make his active researches manifest to
Rosey. Nor, in spite of her father's invitation, did he again approach
the galley--a fact which gave her her first vague impression in his
favor. He seemed also to avoid the various advances which Mr. Nott
appeared impelled to make, whenever they met in the passage, but did so
without seemingly avoiding _her_, and marked his half contemptuous
indifference to the elder Nott by an increase of respect to the young
girl. She would have liked to ask him something about ships, and was
sure his conversation would have been more interesting than that of old
Captain Bower, to whose cabin he had suc