"If I can get you to help me once again," boldly answered Mr. Trace. "I came home for the sole purpose of asking you. I shall do better if I get another start. I ought to have done well before, but—" "But what?" asked Sir Simon, interrupting the sudden pause. "But for ill-luck. Over and over again the chances slipped through my fingers. It was as if ill-luck followed me. We'll talk further of this another day, Simon." Sir Simon nodded acquiescence, and rang the bell for Mr. Trace to be shown to a chamber. A message was despatched to the college for Raymond, and he arrived in the evening. His astonishment when he saw his father was something ludicrous, so entirely was he unprepared for it, and the pleasure proportionately great. Cold and cynical to the general world, Raymond cared for his father. Raymond poured out his budget of news of the past and present; it was of various kinds and degrees of interest: and Mr. Trace the elder had his ears regaled with the current history of the Paradyne family, and George's presumptuous aspirings to the Orville prize. "But we shall do him," cried Trace, with a self-satisfied nod. "Where's Uncle Simon?" Sir Simon's absence had passed unnoticed in their own absorption of self-interest. Mr. Trace could not say where he was. Truth to say, there was a something beating on that estimable knight's brain: a little scrap of news that he had read, or seemed to have read, in the newspapers some days before. He thought it related to the ship spoken of by Mr. Trace, "The Cultivator:" and he was now hunting in every corner of the house for old newspapers, which he scanned attentively. But without success. He went back to the room, nodded to Raymond, and sat down in silence, drumming on the table and ransacking his treacherous memory. It was so unusual a mood for Sir Simon, that Raymond remarked upon it, asking if anything was amiss. "I am trying to recollect something," was the reply. "Your father has told you, I suppose, Raymond, of Hopper's sailing for home in the ship 'Cultivator,' and her sinking with her passengers—" "No. I have not told him," interrupted Mr. Trace, so sharply as to startle Sir Simon. "Why bring it up to him?" he more calmly added, appearing to recollect himself. "The ship was lost with every soul on board." "But that's just it—that I don't think every soul was lost," explained Sir Simon. "I read an account lately of the landing of some passengers at Cork, who were supposed to have been lost. They were picked up at sea in an open boat, having put off from a foundering vessel. It strikes me the vessel was 'The Cultivator.'" "If you are speaking of 'The Cultivator,' from New York, some of her passengers have been saved, and are now in England," interposed Raymond. "Mr. Batty, old Gall's partner, had a son on board; the news arrived of the ship's loss, and the Battys went into mourning; but, a day or two ago, young Batty walked in. Father, what's the matter?"