"No, Flint, you never did. But you saw me once when I had an unstained soul--when I could have looked up to Heaven and said, 'I am poor, Father, but I am honest.' Have you enough money to pay for a lost soul? Oh Flint, I am a wrecked man! If it had only been murder--if I had killed _a man_ in the heat of passion--but a poor innocent babe in the cold snow! The child! the little babe! Ah, Flint, I never see the white snow coming down but I think of it. Those eyes are always with me. They follow me out to sea. They haunt me in the long watches. One night, when a storm had torn our rigging to tatters, and we heard the breakers on the lee-shore, I saw her standing by the binnacle light, and, so help me Heaven! she had grown to be a woman. I fainted at the wheel. You heard of the shipwreck. How could a ship keep clear of the rocks and the helmsman in a trance? Forty souls went down, down! Hist! who said that? Not I. No, not I! I am a maniac!" "Don't go on that way," pleaded Flint, giving uneasy looks toward the door, which he regretted having locked. "Why?" "It is not pleasant." "What isn't?" "Your eyes--your words. What can I do for you?" The man's excitement lulled for a moment. He replied, carelessly: "I am not a chameleon; I cannot live on air; I can earn no money. The elements are against me--storms and shipwrecks follow me.... I have not found him yet," he said, abruptly. "Who?" "My boy." Flint turned aside his head, and laughed quietly. "I am tired of searching for him," said the man, sorrowfully. "I am not going to sea any more." After a pause--"I wish to live among the fishermen off Nantucket. You ask me what I want?" "Yes." "I want two or three hundred dollars to fit up a fishing-smack. Give me this, and I will not trouble you again. God knows I don't want to look on your face!" "And the letter--will you give me the letter?" "Yes; when I take the money." The man drew from his bosom several letters, and selected one more worn and crumpled than the rest. Flint's eyes fed upon it. "Of course," said Flint, "I have not such an amount in the house. I have a hundred dollars up stairs, and will give you a check for the remainder. Will that do?" "No and yes; but get the money, and I'll see." Flint left him alone. From a safe in his bed-chamber he took a small bag of gold, and caressed it for a moment very much as one's grandmother would a pet cat; then he filled up a check, and called Michel. "Run to the police station, Michel, and tell Captain L.----to send me three or four men." Michel shot down stairs, and his master followed him leisurely, patting the gold-bag lovingly at every other step. "Does he think," said Flint's visitor to himself, as the library door closed--"_can_ he think I would part with this paper? He, so full of worldly shrewdness, so simple?" After awhile the door opened. "There!" gasped Flint, placing the bag on the table before the man; "the letter! the letter!"