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He endeavoured to recollect himself that, by calming his terrors his memory might better serve him. Urgent alarms often induce vain hopes which we should laugh at in the cool mood. He believed he might have put that letter down in his bedroom, and perfectly well knowing that he had not done so, and yet coaxed by a will-o'-the-wisp hope, he ransacked the room as though he knew that in it was to be found a gold piece of value whose discovery demanded a careful search only. What was certain in his mind was that that letter was in his pocket when he walked that morning to visit the Minorca. He remembered withdrawing it from his pocket, but in what part of the walk he knew not, and re-perusing a portion of it to refresh his memory. He tried to find comfort in the recollection that the letter bore no address and no signature. But a thundercloud of horror came down on this feeble streak of sunshine when he recalled the damning, incriminating contents of that sheet[Pg 152] which he had scrawled in pencil at "The Swan Inn." Whoever found it would know that Mr Lawrence, and Mr Lawrence alone, had written it, and this, too, irrespective of the handwriting., Captain Weaver believed that the vessel was the Minorca: because, first, she carried royals; next, because she happened to be where she was; third, the leisureliness with which the Aurora rose her seemed to prove that her pace was that of the barque. But the dusk drew round; the gloom of night came along in that thickness of shadow which under such heights as the Aurora was then sailing, seemed swift to persons accustomed to the northern twilights. And at the hour in which the shades of the coming night had with their viewless fingers effaced the stranger from the sight of the Aurora, and shaken some stars into their places, the sail had been risen by the Aurora,[Pg 414] till on the heave of the swell her hull to the height of her bulwarks from the edge of the sea was visible. And then she was steeped in darkness., "First off we plugged every hole under that barn but two, an' at each of these two we set a hoop-net. Then we turned ol' Lucifer, the ferret, loose under the barn. Holy Smoke! afore we knowed it there was high jinks goin' on tinder there. Maurice had hold of one hoop an' me the other. It took ma weasel an' her boys an' girls 'bout half a minute to make up their minds that ol' Lucifer wasn't payin' 'em a friendly visit. When the big scramble was over, I had a bagful of weasels an' so did Maurice. We let Lucifer prowl round a little longer to make sure we had all of 'em, then I called him out. I made Scraff give us one of his hens to feed the ferret on. Then Maurice an' me started off..