"No, sir; he says the bill is just as it was when he received it. I looked at it pretty sharp when I took it; but he said if it wasn't good, he would give me another." "It is perfectly good. Did he tell you where he got the bill?" asked Captain Patterdale, manifesting none of the emotion which agitated him. "No, sir; he did not. I didn't ask him. If it makes any difference, I will do so." "It makes no difference whatever. It is all right, Mr. Leach." The sail-maker folded up his receipt, and left the library. He went home with eighty dollars in his pocket, entirely satisfied with himself, with the nabob, and especially with the firm of Ramsay & Son. He did not care a straw about the white cross of Denmark, so long as the bill was good. Captain Patterdale was deeply interested in the bill which bore this mark, and possibly he expected to conquer by this sign. He was not so much interested in the bill because he had made a voyage up the Baltic and seen the white cross there, as because he had seen it on a bill in that tin box. He was not only interested, but he was anxious, for the active member of the firm of Ramsay & Son seemed to be implicated in a very unfortunate and criminal transaction. More than once Captain Patterdale had observed the pleasant relations between Don John and his fair daughter. As Nellie was a very pretty girl, intelligent, well educated, and agreeable, and in due time would be the heiress of a quarter or a half million, as the case might be, he was rather particular in regard to the friendships she contracted with the young gentlemen of the city. Possibly he did not approve the intimacy between them. But whatever opinions he may have entertained in regard to the equality of social relations between his daughter and the future partner of her joys and sorrows, we must do him the justice to say that he preferred honor and honesty to wealth and position in the gentleman whom Nellie might choose for her life companion. The suspicion, or rather the conviction, forced upon him by "the white cross of Denmark," that Donald was neither honest nor honorable, was vastly more painful than the fact that he was poor, and was the son of a mere ship carpenter. Certainly Nellie did like the young man, though, as she was hardly more than a child, it might be a fancy that would pass away when she realized the difference between the daughter of a nabob and the son of a ship carpenter. While he was thinking of the subject, Nellie entered the library, as she generally did when her father was alone there. She was his only confidant in the house in the matter of the tin box, and he determined to talk with her about the painful discovery he had just made. CHAPTER XII. DONALD ANSWERS QUESTIONS. "Well, Nellie, did you have a good time to-day?" asked Captain Patterdale, as his daughter seated herself near his desk. "I did; a capital time. Everybody seemed to enjoy it," replied she.