watching the poor lady on the sly, so that it must have been when the boats were off, and the steward at the braces with the shipkeepers, that she managed to stow away the letter that I found in my pea-jacket pocket nearly a week after she disappeared. It was addressed to some friend of hers on shore, and she must have watched until she discovered where the jacket hung, and risked the chances; for the letter was wrapped up in the blank leaf of a book, with a few words in pencil-mark on the margin, begging me to deliver it to the address, if ever I had an opportunity to do so. She was lost a week before I found the letter, and though it looks something like it,’ continued he, while his blue eyes glistened, ‘I’ll never believe that she drowned herself, as she never complained aloud; but just grew thinner and thinner, day by day, until it was plain to the dullest head in the ship, that she was pining to death. It’s my settled belief that she had other reasons for thinking her end was near, and that the spirit that haunts the ship is hers. But be that as it may,’ said he solemnly, ‘if Jim Parker ever lives to see the States again, he will travel to the ends of the earth to deliver the letter. Now, if there’s trouble ahead, Mister Miller, thank God, I’m ready to meet it with a clear conscience.’ “‘Mr. Parker,’ I said, still believing the story to be an exaggeration, in spite of the horrible twist he had given it; ‘your counsel is safe with me; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll say nothing more of the captain’s wife, or the mate, until the voyage is up. If there has been foul play, depend upon it, it will come out.’ “‘Just so,’ said he, ‘and if you had not been the kind of man I take you for, I should not have broached a word to you, seeing that you are a stranger to me, and seem to have met with Captain Catherton before.’ “‘The truth is,’ I answered, ‘I have been haunted with such a notion, ever since I boarded the ship in the offing; but as I have repeatedly racked my memory in vain to account for the impression, I begin to think that we must have met in a dream, or that my mind has been misled by a fancied resemblance to some one else, whom I have forgotten. However,’ said I, by way of a finale, ‘if he has murdered his wife and the boat’s crew in the way in which you suspect, depend upon it, he is as certain to swing in the wind, as a ship to her anchor, in a tide-way. In the meantime, it is best to say as little about the matter as possible—and you may as well turn the people too, and have the head-sails unbent.’ “‘Very good, sir,’ answered Parker, and down the poop-stairs he went, while I dove into the sail-room.