“Well, miss, if you want to catch her directly she drops anchor, your best plan will be to go to the signal-station, and ask them to send a man down to your hotel directly she is sighted. Thank your honour, God bless you,” as Captain Bradshaw dropped a half-sovereign into his hand. “Well, upon the whole, Alice, that is as good as we could have expected.” “Yes, I think so, uncle; we have nothing to do but to wait.” In the afternoon, Prescott arrived. Alice was looking from the window when the fly drew up, and she said to her uncle,— “I will go to my room, uncle, while you explain the matter to Mr. Prescott.” “My dear Mr. Prescott, I am most glad to see you. I find we have a good chance of stopping Frank. What a mistake it has all been to be sure. I always said I was an old fool, but I never really thought so until now.” “I am indeed glad, Captain Bradshaw, that the mistake has been cleared up; but I shall be very glad if you will tell me what it has been about, for to myself, as well as to Frank, the whole affair has been a perfect and complete mystery.” “It must have been so, indeed, Mr. Prescott. What did you think it was, for I suppose you must have had some opinion upon it?” Prescott hesitated. “Speak out, Mr. Prescott, I want to know what poor Frank really thought of it.” “Well, Captain Bradshaw, the only thing in which Frank could conceive that he had displeased you, was in thwarting your wishes with regard to Miss Heathcote. He had hoped that you had ceased to feel any anger upon that point before he married; but when he received your letter, his only conclusion, and I own my own agreed with his, was that you had brooded over the matter until it had become a sort of hallucination with you. In fact, that upon that point you had, to speak frankly, gone a little out of your mind. I held that opinion until I saw you at the time your grandson was discovered. By the way in which you spoke, and also by the manner in which Miss Heathcote expressed herself with regard to the breach between you and Frank, I saw that my suspicions were altogether wrong; and that there was some, to me altogether unknown, and perfectly inexplicable, cause of complaint against Frank. I was convinced at the time that it must be an error. I have so perfect a faith in Frank. I have known him so closely and so intimately for so many years. He is so perfectly frank and open with me about I may almost say every thought, that I was certain he could wilfully have done nothing to forfeit your esteem and that of Miss Heathcote. You refused to explain, and I was forced to put it down to one of those extraordinary mistakes which sometimes occur, and which one can only leave to time to solve. And now I hope, Captain Bradshaw, that you will tell me what this supposed error of Frank could have been?”