ere many years."

"Have you never seen or heard of your daughter since?" asked Nigel
eagerly, and with deep sympathy.

"Never--I have travelled far and near, all over the archipelago; into
the interior of the islands, great and small, but have failed to find
her. I have long since felt that she must be dead--for--for she could
not live with the monsters who stole her away."

A certain contraction of the mouth, as he said this, and a gleam of the
eyes, suggested to Nigel that revenge was not yet dead within the
hermit's breast, although it had been overcome.

"What was her name?" asked Nigel, willing to gain time to think how he
ought to act, and being afraid of the effect that the sudden
communication of the news might have on his friend.

"Winnie--darling Winnie--after her mother," said the hermit with deep
pathos in his tone.

A feeling of disappointment came over our hero. Winnie bore not the
most distant resemblance to Kathleen!

"Did you ever, during your search," asked Nigel slowly, "visit the
Cocos-Keeling Islands?"

"Never. They are too far from where the attack on us was made."

"And you never heard of a gun-boat having captured a pirate junk and--"

"Why do you ask, and why pause?" said the hermit, looking at his friend
in some surprise.

Nigel felt that he had almost gone too far.

"Well, you know--" he replied in some confusion, "you--you are right
when you expect me to sympathise with your great sorrow, which I do most
profoundly, and--and--in short, I would give anything to be able to
suggest hope to you, my friend. Men should _never_ give way to
despair."

"Thank you. It is kindly meant," returned the hermit, looking at the
youth with his sad smile. "But it is vain. Hope is dead now."

They were interrupted at this point by the announcement that supper was
ready. At the same time the sun sank, like the hermit's hope, and
disappeared beyond the dark forest.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

NIGEL MAKES A CONFIDANT OF MOSES--UNDERTAKES A LONELY WATCH AND SEES
SOMETHING WONDERFUL.

It was not much supper that Nigel Roy ate that night. The excitement
resulting from his supposed discovery reduced his appetite seriously,
and the intense desire to open a safety-valve in the way of confidential
talk with some one induced a nervously absent disposition which at last
attracted attention.

"You vant a goot dose of kvinine," remarked Verkimier, when, having
satiated himself, he found time to thin