y
got into difficulties, and poor Emma's letters were sad, and came less
frequently. For a year past she has scarcely written to me at all. Tom
has never written. He was a high-spirited fellow, and turned his back
on us all when my father cast him and Emma off."

"Humph!" ejaculated Gildart, "nevertheless his high spirit did not
induce him to refuse the thousand pounds, it would seem."

"You wrong him, Gildart; Emma knew him well, and she told me that she
had placed the money in a bank in her own name, without telling him of
it. Any success that attended him at first was the result of his own
unaided energy and application to business. It is many years now since
they went away. Some time ago we heard that they, with their only
daughter, little Emma, were coming back to England, whether in wealth or
in poverty I cannot tell. The vessel in which they were to sail is
named the `Hawk,' and that is the ship that my father has heard of as
having been seen yesterday."

"How comes it, Kenneth, that you have never opened your lips to me on
this subject during our long acquaintance? I did not know even that you
had a sister."

"Why, to say truth, the subject was not one on which I felt disposed to
be communicative. I don't like to talk of family squabbles, even to my
most intimate friends."

"So we may look for some family breezes and squalls ere long, if not
gales," said Gildart with a laugh.

Kenneth shook his head gravely.

"I fear much," said he, "that the `Hawk' was exposed to last night's
gale; she must have been so if she did not succeed in making some
harbour before it came on; but I cannot shake off the feeling that she
is wrecked, for I know the vessel well, and practical men have told me
that she was quite unseaworthy. True, she was examined and passed in
the usual way by the inspectors, but every one knows that _that_ does
not insure the seaworthiness of vessels."

"Well, but even suppose they _have_ been wrecked," suggested Gildart,
"it does not follow that they have been drowned."

"I don't know," replied the other in a low voice--"I have a strange,
almost a wild suspicion, Gildart."

"What may that be?"

"That the little girl who was left so mysteriously at our door last
night is my sister's child," said Kenneth.

"Whew!" whistled the midshipman, as he stopped and gazed at his friend
in surprise; "well, that _is_ a wild idea, so wild that I would advise
you seriously to dismiss it, Kennie.