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CHAPTER XXIII MR. HINTER PROVES A PUZZLE,

"I will tell you exactly," said Lucy, and the Admiral bent his ear. "It was a very fine morning and I was awake early, and I thought I would walk as far as the pier and back, intending to be home before you read prayers. I left Mamie behind, as she has a trick of running into the water, and she swims so badly that I am afraid she will one day be drowned. On the way I met the red-haired hunchback whom I had seen about Old Harbour Town at times. There was something in his manner that made me think he was making for Old Harbour House. He saluted me very respectfully, and gave me a letter written in pencil. In my excitement and alarm I did not know what I did with it. If I put it in my pocket it was not there when I felt. It was signed by Walter Lawrence, who wrote that Captain Acton had come on[Pg 373] board the Minorca, had stumbled over something the name of which I forget, and fallen a few feet into the hold, which lay open. Mr Lawrence believed that Captain Acton was not dangerously hurt, but he was in a very bad way and in great pain, and he had asked Mr Lawrence to write to his daughter Lucy and acquaint her with the accident and beg her immediate presence, but she must on no account make the disaster known to her aunt or to any other member of the household.,

At this particular moment Croaker, from whom attention had for the time being been diverted, came into evidence again. At first sight of his old enemy the crow had grown rigid with anger; his black neck-ruff had stood up like the feathers on an Indian warrior's head dress and into his beady eyes had sprung the fighting-fire. When Ringdo got possession of the cookie he raised his short wings and prepared to swoop, strike, and if luck held, swoop again. But when the coon dropped the cookie that he might show the girl who had come back to the old playground that he was glad Croaker promptly changed his mind. He swooped, but on the precious cookie instead of on Ringdo, and with the prize in his black beak and the glasses dangling from one black claw, he went out of the open window like a dark streak.,

And clapping her hands as though she was in the box of a theatre ravished by some transcendently fine performance, she once more delivered herself of the maniac laugh which had curdled Paul's blood and which though ringing from lips, though proceeding from a face hidden from him, seemed to strike[Pg 286] Mr Lawrence as nothing which she had spoken had, and save but for the swaying of the ship he stood as motionless as a statue facing another statue whose back was turned to him.

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"Well, sir," answered Mr Pledge, pleased by the skipper's candour and condescension, "it's not for a plain sailor man like me to put his hand into such a tar-bucket as this. I know my bit, and I'm a-willing for to do it, and if the hands get to hear the story of the lady it'll come from her or from that there humpbacked steward who waits upon her, and not from me, for I'm for minding my own affairs, and sticking like a barnacle to a ship's bottom to the ondertakings I enter into.",

"An' torture you, Harry," put in Billy. "Tie you to a tree an' throw knives at you till you weaken an' tell 'em where the stuff's hid. That's what they did to Trigger Finger.",

His companionship, however, in spite of his beauty, for more reasons than one, must prove, then, as it had proved on other occasions, extremely embarrassing to Miss Acton. Shortly after he had obtained his promotion he arrived home on a visit to his father, and meeting her, fell in love and offered her marriage. But Lucy had much good sense, which is not often allied with so much beauty as she possessed. Her heart admitted his fascination, and she had heard things of him that did him honour; moreover, he was a member of a profession which she adored. But it had come to her knowledge, by avenues difficult to determine,[Pg 40] that he was a gambler and drank without moderation, and that his theory of life and morals was such as deserved severe condemnation as it would surely end in provoking heavy punishment.,

A gleam of satisfaction lit Anson's shifty eyes. "All right," he said shortly, and went off after the herd.