"When did you next see Hopgood?" "Well, I didn't fall in with him again for a long while, until this last spring. When I came home from a voyage to China in the Mandarin, last May, I went to my mother's, near New Bedford, and then I found a chap had been to see her in the winter, and persuaded her to give him all the papers in the old chest, that had belonged to William Stanley, making out he was one of the young man's relations. It was that lawyer Clapp; and Hopgood had put him on the track of them 'ere papers." "What were the documents in your chest?" "Most of what they had to show came from me: to be sure, Hopgood had got some letters and papers, written to himself of late years under the name of William Stanley; but all they had before the wreck of the Jefferson came from me." "Were there any books among the articles in your possession?" "No, sir; nothing but the pocket-book." "Are you quite sure? Was there not one book with William Stanley's name in it?" "Not one; that 'ere book they had in court didn't come from me; how they got it I don't know," replied Stebbins positively; who, it seemed, knew nothing of the volume of the Spectator. "Where did you next meet Hopgood?" "Well, I was mad when I found he had got them papers; but the lawyer had left a message with my mother, saying if I came home, she was to tell me I'd hear something to my advantage by applying to him. So I went after him to the place where he lives; and sure enough there was Hopgood, and he and Clapp as thick as can be together. I guess they'd have liked it better if I had never showed myself again: but they got round me, and told me how it was all settled, and if I would only lend a hand, and keep quiet about Hopgood, and speak for them once in a while, they would enter into an agreement to give me enough to make a skipper of me at once. Them 'ere lawyers they can make black look like white--and so I agreed to it at last." Hazlehurst strongly suspected that less persuasion had been necessary than the man wished him to believe. "Did they tell you all their plan?"