was a
vagabond from the first time I clapped eyes upon him. There was a down
look about the fellow's figure-head that I didn't like, and be hanged to
him, but I never thought he would have gone the length he has done. And
so you say you've got him safe in the ruins, Charles?"

"I have, indeed, uncle."

"And then there let him remain, and a good place, too, for him."

"No, uncle, no. I'm sure you speak without thought. I intend to release
him in a few hours, when I have rested from my fatigues. He could not
come to any harm if he were to go without food entirely for the time
that I leave him; but even that he will not do, for there is bread and
water in the dungeon."

"Bread and water! that's too good for him. But, however, Charles, when
you go to let him out, I'll go with you, just to tell him what I think
of him, the vagabond."

"He must suffer amazingly, for no doubt knowing well, as he does, his
own infamous intentions, he will consider that if I were to leave him to
starve to death, I should be but retailing upon him the injuries he
would have inflicted upon me."

"The worst of it is," said the admiral, "I can't think what to do with
him."

"Do nothing, uncle, but just let him go; it will be a sufficient
punishment for such a man to feel that, instead of succeeding in his
designs, he has only brought upon himself the bitterest contempt of
those whom he would fain have injured. I can have no desire for revenge
on such a man as Marchdale."

"You are right, Charles," said Flora; "let him go, and let him go with a
feeling that he has acquired the contempt of those whose best opinions
might have been his for a far less amount of trouble than he has taken
to acquire their worst."

Excitement had kept up Charles to this point, but now, when he arose and
expressed his intention of going to the ruins, for the purpose of
releasing Marchdale, he exhibited such unequivocal symptoms of
exhaustion and fatigue that neither his uncle nor Flora would permit him
to go, so, in deference to them, he gave up the point, and commissioned
the admiral and Jack, with Henry, to proceed to the place, and give the
villain his freedom; little suspecting what had occurred since he had
himself left the neighbourhood of those ruins.

Of course Charles Holland couldn't be at all accountable for the work of
the elements, and it was not for him to imagine that when he left
Marchdale in the dungeon that so awful a catastrophe as that we ha