Of course she accepted the generous proposition. After gathering her few clothes into a bundle, she took her treasure and left the house. The first train that left Batteraft carried her with it, and I have never seen her since. I acknowledge that I watched her go with a lighter and happier heart than I had known for months. “It was in this way that she once drove me from my old home, father,” I said. “But it can’t be such a bad world, after all. For, if the wicked sometimes appear to triumph, they are usually punished in the end, and now that Mrs. Ranck has passed out of our lives we ought to be very happy again.” “We will be, Sam!” returned my father, earnestly, as he affectionately pressed my hand. “Hooray!” yelled Uncle Naboth. CHAPTER XX. STEELE, PERKINS AND STEELE. Captain Steele was extremely grateful to Uncle Naboth for his care of me, and was delighted by the relation of our adventures on the golden island, as well as pardonably proud of the financial success we had attained. A new firm was created under the title of “Steele, Perkins and Steele,” and a new ship was soon found that seemed to have been especially constructed to meet our requirements. Captain Steele, declaring that his wooden leg would in no way interfere with his usefulness, decided to command the ship himself, and Ned Britton was made first mate. Uncle Naboth and I were appointed to look after all the finances and attend to the trading at the various ports, and Nux and Bryonia were brought from San Francisco and given posts on the new ship, to their great delight. By the advice of his shrewder brother-in-law my father converted all his accumulated treasures into money, which was safely invested in Government bonds that were deposited in a Boston bank. “Whatever happens now,” observed Uncle Naboth, “nobody can’t rob you again; and if our business ventures proves unsuccessful, and Sam and I go bankrupt, you’ve always got something to fall back on in your old age.” But success seemed to follow in the wake of the new firm, and the “Cleopatra,” as our ship is named, has made voyage after voyage with unvarying good fortune. THE END. Transcriber’s Notes --Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication. --Generated a cover image, based on graphic elements from the book, and released for free unrestricted use with this eBook. --Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged. --In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.) End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea, by Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald