have begun with my reader. On my first mention of Crofton,
he asked me to repeat the name; and when I spoke of meeting Miss Herbert
at the Milford station, he slightly moved his chair, as if to avoid the
strong light from the window; but from that moment till I finished, he
never interrupted me by a word, nor interposed a question.

"And it was she gave you that old seal-ring I see on your finger?" said
he, at last.

"Yes," said I. "How came you to guess that?"

"Because _I_ gave it to her the day she was sixteen! I am her father."

I drew a long breath, and could only clutch his arm with astonishment,
without being able to speak.

"It's all well-known in England, now. Everybody has been paid in full,
my creditors have met in a body, and signed a request to me to come back
and recommence business. They have done more; they have bought up the
lease of the Foundry, and sent it out to me. Ay, and old Elkanah's
mortgage, too, is redeemed, and I don't owe a shilling."

"You must have worked hard to accomplish all this?"

"Pretty hard, no doubt. You remember those little boats with the holes
in 'em at Lindau. _They_ did the business for me. I was fool enough at
that time to imagine that you had got a clew to my discovery, and were
after me to pick up all the details. I ought to have known better! It
was easy enough to see that _you_ could have no head for anything with
a 'tough bone' in it. Light, thoughtless creatures of _your_ kind are
never dangerous anywhere!"

I was not quite sure whether I was expected to return thanks for this
speech in my favor, and therefore only made some very unintelligible
mutterings.

"There's only one liner now to be raised, and all the guns are already
out of her, but I can return to-morrow. I am free; my contract is
completed; and the 'Ignatief' sloop-of-war is at my orders at Balaklava
to convey me to any port I please in Europe."

He said this so boastfully and so vaingloriously that I really felt
Potts in his humility was not the smaller man of the two. Nor, perhaps,
was my irritation the less, at seeing how little surprise our singular
meeting had caused him, and how much he regarded all I had done in his
behalf as being ordinary and commonplace services. But, perhaps, the
_coup de grace_ of my misery came as he said,--

"Though I forwarded that ten-pound note you lent me to Rome, perhaps you
'll like to have it now. If you need any more, say so."

My heart was in my mouth, a