"Oh, where am I to begin? There is so much to tell--but he shall not do it!" vowed Miss I'Anson. "He shall not separate the only two honest people in the ship! Oh, yes, it was lies, but lies so clever and so fiendish! Let me tell you everything. I'll try to be quick. He has been in the bank about a year. You know him perhaps better than I do. They say you were at school together. You must know his good points, Mr. Bower. I mean the points that would attract a girl. They attracted me. I made a fool of myself. You must have heard about it in Geelong. Well, it's quite true; but it wasn't yesterday, or the day before, or last week. It was in the very beginning. I got over it long ago. But he has always fascinated me. You know him--you can understand? Well, when the bank was robbed I knew he had done it; I can't tell you how I knew, but know I did. His voice was not real. I have been made love to in that voice--there! Well, I went to his rooms. He lunched there every day. I saw his landlady. He had come in to lunch as usual, and said he would ring when he wanted his pudding. He did ring, but was longer than usual in ringing; that was all. His room was the back-room of the house on the ground-floor; the landlady lives in front. Quite a short time ago it was the other way about, and he suggested the alteration. He also made her promise to keep the blinds down in the kitchen, and the windows shut, to keep out the flies and the sun in the heat of the day; he could make her do what he liked. Now listen. The bank garden adjoins his landlady's garden. I found soil on his window-sill, soil on the woodwork. This was in the afternoon when the excitement was at its height; he was in the bank. I came away, making the woman promise not to say a word; but she broke her promise that night, and that was what started the hue and cry. Meanwhile I wrote him a note telling him I knew all, refusing to see him, but solemnly undertaking that if he would put a note where he had once put other notes (because my mother couldn't endure him), and say in it where the money was, nobody should ever know from me that he had touched it. Remember, Mr. Bower, I was once fond of him; nay, you did much as I did yourself; you will understand. He has told me all that has passed between you; how he gave you the note to put in the tennis pavilion. And what do you think he said in it? That if I would come to the beach at ten last night he would tell me where the money was. He did tell me. He told me it was sunk among the rocks at Queenscliff. He told me he was escaping in the _Mollyhawk_--this vessel--but he would land me at Queenscliff, and show me where the place was; because he meant to take the gold, but the notes he dare not. It was the notes that mattered to my father and the bank. They were nine-tenths of the stolen sum. Oh, I know I was a fool to believe or listen to a word he said! I should have had him put in prison at the first. But I am punished as I deserve; they will never