ved that the man had spoken the truth."

"Witnesses? Pooh! More liars, you mean."

"I went to the owners of the vessel," pursued Sir Joseph. "I got from
them the names of the officers and the crew, and I waited, leaving the
case in the hands of the Liverpool police. The ship was wrecked at the
mouth of the Amazon, but the crew and the cargo were saved. The men
belonging to Liverpool came back. They were a bad set, I grant you. But
they were examined separately about the treatment of the foreign sailor,
and they all told the same story. They could give no account of their
captain, nor of the sailor who had been his accomplice in the crime,
except that they had not embarked in the ship which brought the rest of
the crew to England. Whatever may have become of the captain since, he
certainly never returned to Liverpool."

"Did you find out his name?"

The question was asked by Turlington. Even Sir Joseph, the least
observant of men, noticed that it was put with a perfectly unaccountable
irritability of manner.

"Don't be angry, Richard." said the old gentleman. "What is there to be
angry about?"

"I don't know what you mean. I'm not angry--I'm only curious. _Did_ you
find out who he was?"

"I did. His name was Goward. He was well known at Liverpool as a very
clever and a very dangerous man. Quite young at the time I am speaking
of, and a first-rate sailor; famous for taking command of unseaworthy
ships and vagabond crews. Report described him to me as having made
considerable sums of money in that way, for a man in his position;
serving firms, you know, with a bad name, and running all sorts of
desperate risks. A sad ruffian, Richard! More than once in trouble, on
both sides of the Atlantic, for acts of violence and cruelty. Dead, I
dare say, long since."

"Or possibly," said Launce, "alive, under another name, and thriving in
a new way of life, with more desperate risks in it, of some other sort."

"Are _you_ acquainted with the circumstances?" asked Turlington,
retorting Launce's question on him, with a harsh ring of defiance in his
brassy voice.

"What became of the poor foreign sailor, papa?" said Natalie, purposely
interrupting Launce before he could meet the question angrily asked of
him, by an angry reply.

"We made a subscription, and spoke to his consul, my dear. He went back
to his country, poor fellow, comfortably enough."

"And there is an end of Sir Joseph's story," said Turlington, rising
nois