A Message From the Sea | Page 9

bold words, that there was some
greater reason than he yet understood for the young man's distress. And
he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity.
"Come, come!" continued the captain, "Speak out. What is it, boy!"
"You have seen how beautiful she is, sir," said the young man, looking
up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair.
"Did any man ever say she warn't beautiful?" retorted the captain. "If so,
go and lick him."
The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said -
"It's not that, it's not that."
"Wa'al, then, what is it?" said the captain in a more soothing tone.
The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain
what it was, and began: "We were to have been married next Monday
week--"
"Were to have been!" interrupted Captain Jorgan. "And are to be?
Hey?"
Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his fore-finger the
words, "poor father's five hundred pounds," in the written paper.
"Go along," said the captain. "Five hundred pounds? Yes?"
"That sum of money," pursued the young fisherman, entering with the

greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain eyed him
with equal earnestness, "was all my late father possessed. When he died,
he owed no man more than he left means to pay, but he had been able
to lay by only five hundred pounds."
"Five hundred pounds," repeated the captain. "Yes?"
"In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money aside to
leave to my mother,--like to settle upon her, if I make myself
understood."
"Yes?"
"He had risked it once--my father put down in writing at that time,
respecting the money--and was resolved never to risk it again."
"Not a spectator," said the captain. "My country wouldn't have suited
him. Yes?"
"My mother has never touched the money till now. And now it was to
have been laid out, this very next week, in buying me a handsome share
in our neighbouring fishery here, to settle me in life with Kitty."
The captain's face fell, and he passed and repassed his sun-browned
right hand over his thin hair, in a discomfited manner.
"Kitty's father has no more than enough to live on, even in the sparing
way in which we live about here. He is a kind of bailiff or steward of
manor rights here, and they are not much, and it is but a poor little
office. He was better off once, and Kitty must never marry to mere
drudgery and hard living."
The captain still sat stroking his thin hair, and looking at the young
fisherman.
"I am as certain that my father had no knowledge that any one was
wronged as to this money, or that any restitution ought to be made, as I
am certain that the sun now shines. But, after this solemn warning from
my brother's grave in the sea, that the money is Stolen Money," said
Young Raybrock, forcing himself to the utterance of the words, "can I
doubt it? Can I touch it?"
"About not doubting, I ain't so sure," observed the captain; "but about
not touching--no--I don't think you can."
"See then," said Young Raybrock, "why I am so grieved. Think of
Kitty. Think what I have got to tell her!"
His heart quite failed him again when he had come round to that, and
he once more beat his sea-boot softly on the floor. But not for long; he

soon began again, in a quietly resolute tone.
"However! Enough of that! You spoke some brave words to me just
now, Captain Jorgan, and they shall not be spoken in vain. I have got to
do something. What I have got to do, before all other things, is to trace
out the meaning of this paper, for the sake of the Good Name that has
no one else to put it right. And still for the sake of the Good Name, and
my father's memory, not a word of this writing must be breathed to my
mother, or to Kitty, or to any human creature. You agree in this?"
"I don't know what they'll think of us below," said the captain, "but for
certain I can't oppose it. Now, as to tracing. How will you do?"
They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again carefully
puzzled out the whole of the writing.
"I make out that this would stand, if all the writing was here, 'Inquire
among the old men living there, for'--some one. Most like, you'll go to
this village named here?" said the captain, musing, with his finger on
the name.
"Yes! And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman, and--to be sure!--comes
from Lanrean."
"Does he?" said the captain quietly. "As I ain't acquainted with him,
who may