about equal to giving him a day of my life. In
the case of a man I liked, I would not have
thought twice about giving it. In the case of
Mr. Clissold, I did think twice. I would have
been a better Christian, if I could—but just
then, I couldn't.

He thought I was going to say, No. His
eyes got cunning directly. He reached his
hands to my shoulders, and whispered these
words in my ear:

"I'll tell you what I know about the five
hundred pound, if you'll give me a drop."

I determined to give it to him, and pulled out
the flask. I took his hand, and poured the drop
into the hollow of it, and held it for a moment.

"Tell me first," I said, "and drink afterwards."

He looked all round him, as if he thought
there were people on the island to hear us.
"Hush!" he said; "let's whisper about it."
The next question and answer that passed
between us, was louder than before on my side,
and softer than ever on his. This was the question:

"What do you know about the five hundred
pound?"

And this was the answer:

"It's Stolen Money!"

My hand dropped away from his, as if he had
shot me. He instantly fastened on the drop of
liquor in the hollow of his hand, like a hungry
wild beast on a bone, and then looked up for
more. Something in my face (God knows what)
seemed suddenly to frighten him out of his life.
Before I could stir a step, or get a word out,
down he dropped on his knees, whining and
whimpering in the high grass at my feet.

"Don't kill me!" says he; "I'm dying—I'll
think of my poor soul. I'll repent while there's
time——"

Beginning in that way, he maundered awfully,
grovelling down in the grass; asking me every
other minute for "a drop more, and a drop
more;" and talking as if he thought we were
both in England. Out of his wanderings, his
beseechings for another drop, and his miserable
beggar's-petitions for his "poor soul," I
gathered together these words—the same which I
wrote down on the morsel of paper, and of
which nine parts out of ten are now rubbed off!

The first I made out—though not the first he
said—was that some one, whom he spoke of as
"the old man," was alive; and "Lanrean" was
the place he lived in. I was to go there, and
ask, among the old men, for "Tregarthen——"

(At the mention by me of the name of
Tregarthen, my brother, to my great surprise,
stopped me with a start; made me say the name
over more than once; and then, for the first time,
told me of the trouble about his sweet heart and
his marriage. We waited a little to talk that
matter over; after which, I went on again with
my story, in these words:)

Well, as I made out from Clissold's wanderings,
I was to go to Lanrean, to ask among the
old men for Tregarthen, and to say to
Tregarthen, "Clissold was the man. Clissold bore
no malice: Clissold repented like a Christian,
for the sake of his poor soul." No! I was
to say something else to Tregarthen. I was to
say, "Look among the books; look at the leaf you
know of, and see for yourself it's not the right
leaf to be there." No! I was to say something
else to Tregarthen. I was to say, "The right
leaf is hidden, not burnt. Clissold had time for
everything else, but no time to burn that leaf.
Tregarthen came in when he had got the candle
lit to burn it. There was just time to let it
drop from under his hand into the great crack
In the desk, and then he was ordered abroad
by the House, and there was no chance of doing
more." No! I was to say none of these things
to Tregarthen. Only this, instead:— "Look in
Clissold's Desk—and, if you blame anybody,
blame miser Raybrock for driving him to it."
And, oh, another drop—for the Lord's sake,
give him another drop!

So he went on, over and over again, till I
found voice enough to speak, and stop him.

"Get up, and go!" I said to the miserable
wretch. "Get back to your own side of the
island, or I may do you a mischief, in spite of
my own self."

"Give me the other drop, and I will"—was
all the answer I could get from him.

I threw him the flask. He pounced upon it
with a howl. I turned my back—for I could look
at him no longer—and climbed down again to
my cavern on the beach.

I sat down alone on the sand, and tried to
quiet myself fit to think about what I had heard.
That father could ever have wilfully done
anything unbecoming his character as an honest
man, was what I wouldn't believe, in the first
place. And that the wretched brute I had just
parted from was in his right senses, was what I
wouldn't believe, in the second place. What I
had myself seen of drinkers, at sea and ashore,
helped me to understand the condition into
which he had fallen. I knew that when a man
who has been a drunkard for years, is suddenly
cut off his drink, he drops to pieces like, body
and mind, for the want of it. I had also heard
ship-doctors talk, by some name of their own, of
a drink-madness, which we ignorant men call
the Horrors. And I made it out, easy enough,
that I had seen the supercargo in the first of
these conditions; and that if we both lived long
enough without help coming to us, I might soon
see him in the second. But when I tried to get
farther, and settle how much of what I had
heard was wanderings and how much truth, and
what it meant if any of it was truth, my slowness
got in my way again; and where a quicker
man might have made up his mind in an hour
or two, I was all day, in sore distress, making
up mine. The upshot of what I settled with
myself was, in two words, this:—Having
mother's writing-case handy about me, I
determined first to set down for my own self's
reminder, all that I had heard. Second, to clear
the matter up if ever I got back to England
alive; and, if wrong had been done to that old
man, or to anybody else, in father's name