But here Randolph, to evade further personal allusions, continued laughingly: “And as I’ve LOST my ‘trust,’ I haven’t even that to show in defense. Indeed, when you all are gone I shall have nothing to remind me of my kind benefactor. It will seem like a dream.”

Miss Eversleigh was silent for a moment, and then glanced quickly around her. The rest of the company were their elders, and, engaged in conversation at the other end of the apartment, had evidently left the young people to themselves.

“Wait a moment,” she said, with a youthful air of mystery and earnestness. Randolph saw that she had slipped an Indian bracelet, profusely hung with small trinkets, from her arm to her wrist, and was evidently selecting one. It proved to be a child’s tiny ring with a small pearl setting. “This was given to me by Cousin Jack,” said Miss Eversleigh in a low voice, “when I was a child, at some frolic or festival, and I have kept it ever since. I brought it with me when we came here as a kind of memento to show him. You know that is impossible now. You say you have nothing of his to keep. Will you accept this? I know he would be glad to know you had it. You could wear it on your watch chain. Don’t say no, but take it.”

Protesting, yet filled with a strange joy and pride, Randolph took it from the young girl’s hand. The little color which had deepened on her cheek cleared away as he thanked her gratefully, and with a quiet dignity she arose and moved toward the others. Randolph did not linger long after this, and presently took his leave of his host and hostess.

It seemed to him that he walked home that night in the whirling clouds of his dispelled dream. The airy structure he had built up for the last three months had collapsed. The enchanted canopy under which he had stood with Miss Avondale was folded forever. The romance he had evolved from his strange fortune had come to an end, not prosaically, as such romances are apt to do, but with a dramatic termination which, however, was equally fatal to his hopes. At any other time he might have projected the wildest hopes from the fancy that he and Miss Avondale were orphaned of a common benefactor; but it was plain that her interests were apart from his. And there was an indefinable something he did not understand, and did not want to understand, in the story she had told him. How much of it she had withheld, not so much from delicacy or contempt for his understanding as a desire to mislead him, he did not know. His faith in her had gone with his romance. It was not strange that the young English girl’s unsophisticated frankness and simple confidences lingered longest in his memory, and that when, a few days later, Mr. Dingwall informed him that Miss Avondale had sailed for England with the Dornton family, he was more conscious of a loss in the stranger girl’s departure.

“I suppose Miss Avondale takes charge of—of the boy, sir?” he said quietly.

Mr. Dingwall gave him a quick glance. “Possibly. Sir William has behaved with great—er—consideration,” he replied briefly.

IV

Randolph’s nature was too hopeful and recuperative to allow him to linger idly in the past. He threw himself into his work at the bank with his old earnestness and a certain simple conscientiousness which, while it often provoked the raillery of his fellow clerks, did not escape the eyes of his employers. He was advanced step by step, and by the end of the year was put in charge of the correspondence with banks and agencies. He had saved some money, and had made one or two profitable investments. He was enabled to take better apartments in the same building he had occupied. He had few of the temptations of youth. His fear of poverty and his natural taste kept him from the speculative and material excesses of the period. A distrust of his romantic weakness kept him from society and meaner entanglements which might have beset his good looks and good nature. He worked in his rooms at night and forbore his old evening rambles.

As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought much of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a sense of his old doubts and suspicions revived. His reason had obliged him to accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an ordinary theft; his instinct remained unconvinced. There was no superstition connected with his loss. His own prosperity had not been impaired by it. On the contrary, he reflected bitterly that the dead man had apparently died only to benefit others. At such times he recalled, with a pleasure that he knew might become perilous, the tall English girl who had defended Dornton’s memory and echoed his own sympathy. But that was all over now.

One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past experience, Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest gale. As he buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of Montgomery Street, it was not strange that his thoughts reverted to that night and the memory of his dead protector. But reaching his apartment, he sternly banished them with the vanished romance they revived, and lighting his lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work. He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his door. A little impatiently he called, “Come in.”

The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the passage a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room. Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound, and motionless. He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling lights in the windows opposite, the flash of passing carriage lamps in the street below. But the figure before him was none other than the dead man of whom he had just been thinking.

The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of unmistakable laughter. It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet it provoked a disagreeable recollection. Nevertheless, it dissipated Randolph’s superstitious tremor, for he had never before heard of a ghost who laughed heartily.

“You don’t remember me,” said the man. “Belay there, and I’ll freshen your memory.” He stepped back to the door, opened it, put his arm out into the hall, and brought in a portmanteau, closed the door, and appeared before Randolph again with the portmanteau in his hand. It was the one that had been stolen. “There!” he said.

“Captain Dornton,” murmured Randolph.

The man laughed again and flung down the portmanteau. “You’ve got my name pat enough, lad, I see; but I reckoned you’d have spotted ME without that portmanteau.”

“I see you’ve got it back,” stammered Randolph in his embarrassment. “It was—stolen from me.”

Captain Dornton laughed again, dropped into a chair, rubbed his hands on his knees, and turned his face toward Randolph. “Yes; I stole it—or had it stolen—the same thing, for I’m responsible.”

“But I would have given it up to YOU at once,” said Randolph reproachfully, clinging to the only idea he could understand in his utter bewilderment. “I have religiously and faithfully kept it for you, with all its contents, ever since—you disappeared.”

“I know it, lad,” said Captain Dornton, rising, and extending a brown, weather-beaten hand which closed heartily on the young man’s; “no need to say that. And you’ve kept it even better than you know. Look here!”

He lifted the portmanteau to his lap and disclosed BEHIND the usual small pouch or pocket in the lid a slit in the lining. “Between the lining and the outer leather,” he went on grimly, “I had two or three bank notes that came to about a thousand dollars, and some papers, lad, that, reckoning by and large, might be worth to me a million. When I got that portmanteau back they were all there, gummed in, just as I had left them. I didn’t show up and come for them myself, for I was lying low at the time, and—no offense, lad—I didn’t know how you stood with a party who was no particular friend of mine. An old shipmate whom I set to watch that party quite accidentally run across your bows in the ferry boat, and heard enough to make him follow in your wake here, where he got the portmanteau. It’s all right,” he said, with a laugh, waving aside with his brown hand Randolph’s protesting gesture. “The old bag’s only got back to its rightful owner. It mayn’t have been got in shipshape ‘Frisco style, but when a man’s life is at stake, at least, when it’s a question of his being considered dead or alive, he’s got to take things as he finds ‘em, and I found ‘em d– bad.”

In a flash of recollection Randolph remembered the obtruding miner on the ferry boat, the same figure on the wharf corner, and the advantage taken of his absence with Miss Avondale. And Miss Avondale was the “party” this man’s shipmate was watching! He felt his face crimsoning, yet he dared not question him further, nor yet defend her. Captain Dornton noticed it, and with a friendly tact, which Randolph had not expected of him, rising again, laid his hand gently on the young man’s shoulder.

“Look here, lad,” he said, with his pleasant smile; “don’t you worry your head about the ways or doings of the Dornton family, or any of their friends. They’re a queer lot—including your humble servant. You’ve done the square thing accordin’ to your lights. You’ve ridden straight from start to finish, with no jockeying, and I shan’t forget it. There are only two men who haven’t failed me when I trusted them. One was you when I gave you my portmanteau; the other was Jack Redhill when he stole it from you.”

He dropped back in his chair again, and laughed silently.

“Then you did not fall overboard as they supposed,” stammered Randolph at last.

“Not much! But the next thing to it. It wasn’t the water that I took in that knocked me out, my lad, but something stronger. I was shanghaied.”

“Shanghaied?” repeated Randolph vacantly.

“Yes, shanghaied! Hocused! Drugged at that gin mill on the wharf by a lot of crimps, who, mistaking me for a better man, shoved me, blind drunk and helpless, down the steps into a boat, and out to a short-handed brig in the stream. When I came to I was outside the Heads, pointed for Guayaquil. When they found they’d captured, not a poor Jack, but a man who’d trod a quarterdeck, who knew, and was known at every port on the trading line, and who could make it hot for them, they were glad to compromise and set me ashore at Acapulco, and six weeks later I landed in ‘Frisco.”

“Safe and sound, thank Heaven!” said Randolph joyously.

“Not exactly, lad,” said Captain Dornton grimly, “but dead and sat upon by the coroner, and my body comfortably boxed up and on its way to England.”

“But that was nine months ago. What have you been doing since? Why didn’t you declare yourself then?” said Randolph impatiently, a little irritated by the man’s extreme indifference. He really talked like an amused spectator of his own misfortunes.

“Steady, lad. I know what you’re going to say. I know all that happened. But the first thing I found when I got back was that the shanghai business had saved my life; that but for that I would have really been occupying that box on its way to England, instead of the poor devil who was taken for me.”

A cold tremor passed over Randolph. Captain Dornton, however, was tolerantly smiling.

“I don’t understand,” said Randolph breathlessly.

Captain Dornton rose and, walking to the door, looked out into the passage; then he shut the door carefully and returned, glancing about the room and at the storm-washed windows. “I thought I heard some one outside. I’m lying low just now, and only go out at night, for I don’t want this thing blown before I’m ready. Got anything to drink here?”

Randolph replied by taking a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a cupboard. The captain filled his glass, and continued with the same gentle but exasperating nonchalance, “Mind my smoking?”

“Not at all,” said Randolph, pushing a cigar toward him. But the captain put it aside, drew from his pocket a short black clay pipe, stuffed it with black “Cavendish plug,” which he had first chipped off in the palm of his hand with a large clasp knife, lighted it, and took a few meditative whiffs. Then, glancing at Randolph’s papers, he said, “I’m not keeping you from your work, lad?” and receiving a reply in the negative, puffed at his pipe and once more settled himself comfortably in his chair, with his dark, bearded profile toward Randolph.

“You were saying just now you didn’t understand,” he went on slowly, without looking up; “so you must take your own bearings from what I’m telling you. When I met you that night I had just arrived from Melbourne. I had been lucky in some trading speculations I had out there, and I had some bills with me, but no money except what I had tucked in the skin of that portmanteau and a few papers connected with my family at home. When a man lives the roving kind of life I have, he learns to keep all that he cares for under his own hat, and isn’t apt to blab to friends. But it got out in some way on the voyage that I had money, and as there was a mixed lot of ‘Sydney ducks’ and ‘ticket of leave men’ on board, it seems they hatched a nice little plot to waylay me on the wharf on landing, rob me, and drop me into deep water. To make it seem less suspicious, they associated themselves with a lot of crimps who were on the lookout for our sailors, who were going ashore that night too. I’d my suspicions that a couple of those men might be waiting for me at the end of the wharf. I left the ship just a minute or two before the sailors did. Then I met you. That meeting, my lad, was my first step toward salvation. For the two men let you pass with my portmanteau, which they didn’t recognize, as I knew they would ME, and supposed you were a stranger, and lay low, waiting for me. I, who went into the gin-mill with the other sailors, was foolish enough to drink, and was drugged and crimped as they were. I hadn’t thought of that. A poor devil of a ticket of leave man, about my size, was knocked down for me, and,” he added, suppressing a laugh, “will be buried, deeply lamented, in the chancel of Dornton Church. While the row was going on, the skipper, fearing to lose other men, warped out into the stream, and so knew nothing of what happened to me. When they found what they thought was my body, he was willing to identify it in the hope that the crime might be charged to the crimps, and so did the other sailor witnesses. But my brother Bill, who had just arrived here from Callao, where he had been hunting for me, hushed it up to prevent a scandal. All the same, Bill might have known the body wasn’t mine, even though he hadn’t seen me for years.”

“But it was frightfully disfigured, so that even I, who saw you only once, could not have sworn it was NOT you,” said Randolph quickly.

“Humph!” said Captain Dornton musingly. “Bill may have acted on the square—though he was in a d–d hurry.”

“But,” said Randolph eagerly, “you will put an end to all this now. You will assert yourself. You have witnesses to prove your identity.”

“Steady, lad,” said the captain, waving his pipe gently. “Of course I have. But”—he stopped, laid down his pipe, and put his hands doggedly in his pockets—“IS IT WORTH IT?” Seeing the look of amazement in Randolph’s face, he laughed his low laugh, and settled himself back in his chair again. “No,” he said quietly, “if it wasn’t for my son, and what’s due him as my heir, I suppose—I reckon I’d just chuck the whole d–d thing.”

“What!” said Randolph. “Give up the property, the title, the family honor, the wrong done to your reputation, the punishment”—He hesitated, fearing he had gone too far.

Captain Dornton withdrew his pipe from his mouth with a gesture of caution, and holding it up, said: “Steady, lad. We’ll come to THAT by and by. As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM ten years ago. To me they meant only the old thing—the life of a country gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly business that the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round your neck. They meant all this to me, who loved adventure and the sea from my cradle. I cut the property, for I hated it, and I hate it still. If I went back I should hear the sea calling me day and night; I should feel the breath of the southwest trades in every wind that blew over that tight little island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship’s bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who’s got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne, who knows every den and every longshoreman in it from a South American tienda to a Samoan beach-comber’s hut,—what does he want with society?” He paused as Randolph’s eyes were fixed wonderingly on the first sign of emotion on his weather-beaten face, which seemed for a moment to glow with the strength and freshness of the sea, and then said, with a laugh: “You stare, lad. Well, for all the Dorntons are rather proud of their family, like as not there was some beastly old Danish pirate among them long ago, and I’ve got a taste of his blood in me. But I’m not quite as bad as that yet.”

He laughed, and carelessly went on: “As to the family honor, I don’t see that it will be helped by my ripping up the whole thing and perhaps showing that Bill was a little too previous in identifying me. As to my reputation, that was gone after I left home, and if I hadn’t been the legal heir they wouldn’t have bothered their heads about me. My father had given me up long ago, and there isn’t a man, woman, or child that wouldn’t now welcome Bill in my place.”

“There is one who wouldn’t,” said Randolph impulsively.

“You mean Caroline Avondale?” said Captain Dornton dryly.

Randolph colored. “No; I mean Miss Eversleigh, who was with your brother.”

Captain Dornton reflected. “To be sure! Sibyl Eversleigh! I haven’t seen her since she was so high. I used to call her my little sweetheart. So Sybby remembered Cousin Jack and came to find him? But when did you meet her?” he asked suddenly, as if this was the only detail of the past which had escaped him, fixing his frank eyes upon Randolph.

The young man recounted at some length the dinner party at Dingwall’s, his conversation with Miss Eversleigh, and his interview with Sir William, but spoke little of Miss Avondale. To his surprise, the captain listened smilingly, and only said: “That was like Billy to take a rise out of you by pretending you were suspected. That’s his way—a little rough when you don’t know him and he’s got a little grog amidships. All the same, I’d have given something to have heard him ‘running’ you, when all the while you had the biggest bulge on him, only neither of you knew it.” He laughed again, until Randolph, amazed at his levity and indifference, lost his patience.

“Do you know,” he said bluntly, “that they don’t believe you were legally married?”

But Captain Dornton only continued to laugh, until, seeing his companion’s horrified face, he became demure. “I suppose Bill didn’t, for Bill had sense enough to know that otherwise he would have to take a back seat to Bobby.”

“But did Miss Avondale know you were legally married, and that your son was the heir?” asked Randolph bluntly.

“She had no reason to suspect otherwise, although we were married secretly. She was an old friend of my wife, not particularly of mine.”

Randolph sat back amazed and horrified. Those were HER own words. Or was this man deceiving him as the others had?

But the captain, eying him curiously, but still amusedly, added: “I even thought of bringing her as one of my witnesses, until”—

“Until what?” asked Randolph quickly, as he saw the captain had hesitated.

“Until I found she wasn’t to be trusted; until I found she was too thick with Bill,” said the captain bluntly. “And now she’s gone to England with him and the boy, I suppose she’ll make him come to terms.”

“Come to terms?” echoed Randolph. “I don’t understand.” Yet he had an instinctive fear that he did.

“Well,” said the captain slowly, “suppose she might prefer the chance of being the wife of a grown-up baronet to being the governess of one who was only a minor? She’s a cute girl,” he added dryly.

“But,” said Randolph indignantly, “you have other witnesses, I hope.”

“Of course I have. I’ve got the Spanish records now from the Callao priest, and they’re put in a safe place should anything happen to me—if anything could happen to a dead man!” he added grimly. “These proofs were all I was waiting for before I made up my mind whether I should blow the whole thing, or let it slide.”

Randolph looked again with amazement at this strange man who seemed so indifferent to the claims of wealth, position, and even to revenge. It seemed inconceivable, and yet he could not help being impressed with his perfect sincerity. He was relieved, however, when Captain Dornton rose with apparent reluctance and put away his pipe.

“Now look here, my lad, I’m right glad to have overhauled you again, whatever happened or is going to happen, and there’s my hand upon it! Now, to come to business. I’m going over to England on this job, and I want you to come and help me.”

Randolph’s heart leaped. The appeal revived all his old boyish enthusiasm, with his secret loyalty to the man before him. But he suddenly remembered his past illusions, and for an instant he hesitated.

“But the bank,” he stammered, scarce knowing what to say.

The captain smiled. “I will pay you better than the bank; and at the end of four months, in whatever way this job turns out, if you still wish to return here, I will see that you are secured from any loss. Perhaps you may be able to get a leave of absence. But your real object must be kept a secret from every one. Not a word of my existence or my purpose must be blown before I am ready. You and Jack Redhill are all that know it now.”

“But you have a lawyer?” said the surprised Randolph.

“Not yet. I’m my own lawyer in this matter until I get fairly under way. I’ve studied the law enough to know that as soon as I prove that I’m alive the case must go on on account of my heir, whether I choose to cry quits or not. And it’s just THAT that holds my hand.”

Randolph stared at the extraordinary man before him. For a moment, as the strange story of his miraculous escape and his still more wonderful indifference to it all recurred to his mind, he felt a doubt of the narrator’s truthfulness or his sanity. But another glance at the sailor’s frank eyes dispelled that momentary suspicion. He held out his hand as frankly, and grasping Captain Dornton’s, said, “I will go.”