"Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was all broke up." The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks. She could not have fallen! "They--they know--" "They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the pawnbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks. Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated." She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him. "Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done." "Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you? Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought. There is for me, at any rate." She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden. She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis. But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self gain. And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that passing moment with all the passion which filled her heart for him. Had Tunis not been steering the _Seamew_ through a pretty tortuous channel at just that moment there is no knowing what he would have done--spurred by Sheila's look! CHAPTER XXXIII A HAVEN OF REST Wreckers' Head so shelters the cove from the northeast that the schooner could be brought safely in to Luiz Wharf, instead of dropping her anchor in deep water. Half the port, and all of Portygee Town, crowded nearby wharves and streets to welcome Tunis Latham's schooner; for news of her peril and the way in which help had reached the _Seamew_ had come down from the Head as on the wings of the wind itself.