Judge Ralston would have liked to have that evening in quiet with his wife and son, but the people did not will it so. They had done great injustice to Paul, and they could not wait before trying to make some amends. All the available material for a celebration in Oak City and Still Haven was collected;—bonfires were kindled in different parts of the island. The Ralston House was ablaze with light, from the Smuggler’s room in the basement to the look-out on the roof, from which rockets and Roman candles went hissing into the sky, and were seen on the mainland and by fishing boats far out to sea. Tom had but little to do with it all. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m tuckered out, and feel as if the sand was all taken from me. Go ahead and let me rest.” They left him to himself, sitting on a box near the stable and looking on, while Max Allen and Seth Walker superintended the fireworks and attended to things generally. Paul was with his mother holding her hand and occasionally kissing her in response to some look in her eyes. No one intruded upon them that night, but the next day hundreds came to congratulate Paul and say a kind word to Tom, assuring him that not a word had been suggested of an arrest, or anything like it. “We’ve had enough such work to stand us a lifetime, and we don’t want any more,” they said, while Max declared he should resign his office before he would touch Tom. That day Mrs. Ralston received a short letter from Clarice, who was in New York with her mother and expected to sail for Liverpool the following day. The family, who had occupied their house during the summer, wished to rent it for a year or more, she wrote, and she had decided to go abroad, as both her mother and herself needed an entire change after the sad and exciting scenes through which they had passed. They were to stop a short time in England as guests of Mr. Fenner,—then cross to the Continent and spend the winter in Rome or Naples. “I have heard of Paul’s giving himself up,” she wrote in conclusion. “It was wise, perhaps, to do so, and I am sure they will be more lenient on account of it. I am so sorry for him. Please tell him so. The past seems to me like a dreadful dream from which I am not yet fully awake. With love, CLARICE.”