it had been cast adrift from the taffrail by accident.

Betty, with face like a thundercloud, had brought the letter up to
Louise. When the girl had hastily read it through she ran down to show
it to Cap'n Amazon. She found him reading an epistle of his own, while
Cap'n Joab, Milt Baker, Washy Gallup, and several other neighbors
hovered near.

"Yep. I got one myself," announced Cap'n Amazon.

"Oh, captain!"

"Yep. From Abe. Good reason why your father didn't speak of Abe in
his letter to your a'nt. Didn't in yours, did he?"

Louise shook her head.

"No? Listen here," Cap'n Amazon said. "'I haven't spoke to Professor
Grayling. He don't know Abe Silt from the jib-boom. Why should he? I
am a foremast hand and he lives abaft. But he is a fine man.
Everybody says so. We've had some squally weather----'

"Well! that's nothin'. Ahem!"

He went on, reading bits to the interested listeners now and then, and
finally handed the letter to Cap'n Joab Beecher. The latter, looking
mighty queer indeed, adjusted his spectacles and spread out the sheet.

"Ye-as," he admitted cautiously. "That 'pears to be Cap'n Abe's
handwritin', sure 'nough."

"Course 'tis!" squealed Washy Gallup. "As plain, as plain!"

"Read it out," urged Milt while the captain went to wait upon a
customer.

Louise listened with something besides curiosity. The letter was a
rambling account of the voyage of the _Curlew_, telling little directly
or exactly about the daily occurrences; but nothing in it conflicted
with what Professor Grayling had written Louise--save one thing.

The girl realized that the arrival of this letter from Cap'n Abe had
finally punctured that bubble of suspicion against the captain that had
been blown overnight. It seemed certain and unshakable proof that the
substitute storekeeper was just whom he claimed to be, and it once and
for all put to death the idea that Cap'n Abe had not gone to sea in the
_Curlew_.

Yet Louise had never been more puzzled since first suspicion had been
roused against Cap'n Amazon. A single sentence in her father's letter
could not be made to jibe with Cap'n Abe's epistle, and therefore she
folded up her own letter and thrust it into her pocket. In speaking of
his companions on shipboard, the professor had written:

"I am by far the oldest person aboard the _Curlew_, skipper included.
They are all young fellows, both for'ard and in the afterguard. Yet
they treat me like one o