When he reached the hut he saw her on the verandah, seated in the usual chair and with tears in her eyes. The papers he had given her were stretched out on a table before her, and, as he mounted the steps, she held out one to him and bade him read it. A glance showed that it was a will made by her father, a will properly drawn up and attested at some lawyer's office in Tortola; a will by which everything was left to her, including the island and the treasure if ever found--indeed, all that he possessed. "Because," he read, in the cramped legal hand of the person who had drawn it out, "of the cruelty, the greed and the evil temper of my son to me, as well as his ill-treatment of me and my dear daughter, Barbara, I give and bequeath to her all and everything of which I may die possessed, including Coffin Island, any buried treasure that may chance to be found," etc., etc., etc. "Great heavens!" Reginald thought to himself, as he handed her back the will, "there was no end to the scoundrel's wickedness. How could this villain be Barbara's brother?" CHAPTER XXXIX. THE APPROACHING SEARCH. Reginald found Joseph Alderly's boat on the same evening, when he was out on a tour about the coast of the island on the lookout for it. As he suspected, Alderly had brought it round to the neighbourhood of the river's mouth, preferring to get at him that way instead of by the path down from his house. His reasons for doing so might have been manifold, the young man knew very well--reasons that would, doubtless, at once occur to such a scheming brain as that of the dead ruffian. For, independently of the fact that he would have strongly wished to avoid any encounter with him on shore--and, for aught he knew, Reginald might be ashore at any period of the night--he might have brought his cutter to that neighbourhood so as to be able to get away from the island at once, after the sinking of the _Pompeia_ had been accomplished.