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Win poker ⚡, a respected betting brand, stands out among Asian bookmakers and attracts a large number of players.⚡ "You bet it is," cried Billy.,"It is very strange," said Captain Acton, "that that mis-shapen fellow made by Mr Lawrence the steward of the ship, should be employed to convey a letter to my daughter at so early an hour when there was very little likelihood of finding the young lady abroad.",The voice choked up and a tear splashed down on the hand clenched on her lap.,"Yes, ma'am," answered Billy, promptly.,"It is you, my dear Dick, and old companion, mess-mate and friend, with whom I have enjoyed many a jaunt to which I could never[Pg 213] recur without passionately lamenting the days that are no more, who will help me in this desperate undertaking. I propose to navigate the vessel, not to Kingston, Jamaica, to which port she ought to be bound, but to the port in which you live, Rio de Janeiro. By a ruse which must prove successful, I think, I shall inveigle Miss Lucy Acton on board, and everything being ready, shall make sail immediately after she is carefully confined in my cabin. I have had a cabin set apart for my own use, which I represented to Captain Acton was to serve as a sick-bay. This drama has been well rehearsed. When far out at sea the crew will be summoned aft. I shall read some pretended sealed orders from Captain Acton, requiring me to carry the ship to Rio de Janeiro, and to sell her, if possible, after discharging the mate and crew, who will receive from Captain Acton, on application, treble the amount of their wages they would have got for sailing the vessel to Kingston. I shall also take care to destroy the ship's papers. And my story will be that I was overhauled by an American cruiser, who sent an officer on board. He examined the box of papers and took it away to show to his Captain, as he considered them unsatisfactory. The cruiser then braced her main top-sail yard to the wind and sailed away with the box of papers. On my arrival, we will consult together as to the safest course to be adopted for the sale of the ship and cargo, by which time I have no doubt the lady will have agreed to marry me either for love,[Pg 214] or because she has been placed in a situation which must render marriage imperative to her in the name of honour. With the money which I shall make, thanks to you, through this business, I will pay off all my debts in England, and Lucy Acton being my wife, or promising me her hand, I may count with absolute certainty upon the forgiveness of her father, who is not likely to abandon his only child for a behaviour that was no fault of hers, and the rest must be left to time.，"What you mean, believe you?"，It was, perhaps, just as well for Anson that he kept out of Billy's way during this period. However very little that Billy did was missed by his pale blue eyes. He knew that his step-brother had visited the haunted house alone and had searched it nook and corner. For what? He had seen him fasten his rabbit-foot to a branch of a tree and dig, and dig. For what? He wanted to find out but dared not ask. Perhaps Billy was going crazy! He acted like it. Anson made up his mind that he would confide his suspicions in his mother. But on the very day that he had decided to pour into Mrs. Wilson's ear all the strange goings-on of his brother, Billy caught him out on a forest-path alone and, gripping him by the shoulder, threatened to conjure up by means of witchcraft at his command a seven-headed dragon with cat-fish hooks for claws who would rip his—Anson's—soul to shreds if he so much as breathed to his mother one word of what he had seen.，"It gives me great pleasure to serve my old friend," said Captain Acton. "Mr Lawrence is an officer with a career full of gallant things; I have no doubt he is a[Pg 24] capable navigator. Will you ask him to call upon me this evening?""Well, we may go with you some day, sir," said Captain Acton good-humouredly, "but peace must be declared before I embark. We are keeping Miss Acton waiting."

"Who?",With a bound he was outside and over beside her. She sat on the block beneath the hop-vine, her face in her apron. She was rocking to and fro and sobbing.,"May I have a word with you, sir?" he exclaimed in a coarse, hoarse, broken voice.,He contrasted her wretched bed on that cabin floor with her home bedchamber which he figured—he had never entered it; a room sweet-scented with the flowers of the creepers at the windows, white and fair in the apparel of a girl's bower of rest, elegant in its equipment as were all the rooms of the home of the Actons.,"How greatly Mr Lawrence has improved, not indeed in manners, for he was always a very fine gentleman, a very pretty gentleman, but in appearance, since you gave him the command of the Minorca, Captain Acton.",She stayed her sobbing to exclaim in the high, strained notes she had before spoken in: "Send me home, sir! send me back to my father! There are ships about. You speak falsely if you say there are no ships. We are still near my home. Do as I say before you drive me mad!",Captain Weaver knew many who were engaged on the several wharves, and so indeed did Captain Acton. They asked two or three score of different persons the question, but the majority had not been down on the wharves at that time, and the few who were at work declared that they had not seen her. It seemed impossible to Captain Weaver as well as to Captain Acton, that so beautiful[Pg 195] and well known a lady as Miss Lucy should make her appearance on the wharf at a time of day when scarce more than labourers were about, without being either recognised or seen, and her presence borne witness to by those who did not know who she was.,"Croaker found that and brought it to me," she said, proudly.,Thomas Pledge's mind was of a very common order. He had gathered from Eagle that the girl was to pretend a situation of acute distress, that when she was married her father should not hold her responsible for her elopement. Her words might have carried weight, and even conviction, but for the song and loud unmeaning laugh that closed them, in which Mr Pledge saw nothing but acting, not having experience of insanity in any shape or form. And shouting through the door, "I'll go and report to the Captain, ma'am, that you're locked up and want to get out," he turned, with the intention of making for the companion ladder, when he saw Mr Lawrence standing a few[Pg 277] paces abaft the steps, tall, stern, frowning, his face fierce with the strain, and indeed almost fury, of the attention with which he had bent his ears to catch the syllables of Lucy through the bulkhead.,At last, sick and dizzy, he turned from the place and with raft and pole fought his way back to the shore. Never again, he told himself, would he try to fathom further what lay in Lost Man's Swamp. Weary and perspiring, he climbed the wooded upland. He turned and dipped into the willows, intending to take the shortest way home through the hardwoods. On top of the beech knoll he paused for a moment to let his eyes rest on the big house in the walnut grove. In some vague way his mind connected its owner with that dead waste of stinking marsh. Why, he wondered, had Hinter chosen this lonely spot on which to build his home? As he turned to strike across the neck of woods between him and the causeway the man about whom he had just been thinking stepped out from a clump of hazel-nut bushes directly in his path.,Just then the door was opened, and the footman announced "Admiral Sir William Lawrence.",Billy, who had anticipated what was coming, gave a well-feigned start..