The captain opened an iron safe in the room, and from a drawer took out a handful of bank bills. From these he selected three, and tossed them on the table. "Like those?" he inquired, with interest. "Exactly like them," replied Laud, astonished to find that each was the counterpart of the one he had paid Donald for the Juno, and had the "white cross of Denmark" upon it. "Do you know how those bills happened to be in that condition, Mr. Cavendish?" chuckled the captain. "Of course I do not, sir." "I'll tell you, my gay buffer. I have got a weak, soft place somewhere in my gizzard; I don't know where; if I did, I'd cut it out. About three months ago, just after I brought from Portland one hundred of these new fifty-dollar bills, there was a great cry here for money for some missionary concern. I read something in the newspaper, at this time, about what some of the missionaries had done for a lot of sailors who had been cast away on the South Sea Islands. I thought more of the psalm-singers than ever before, and I was tempted to do something for them. Well, I actually wrote to some parson here who was howling for money, and stuck four of those bills between the leaves. I think it is very likely I should have sent them to the parson, if I hadn't been called out of the room. I threw the note, with the bills in it, on the table, and went out to see a pair of horses a jockey had driven into the yard for me to look at. When I came back and glanced at the note, I thought what a fool I had been, to think of giving money to those canting psalm-singers. I was mad with myself for my folly, and I tore the note into four pieces before I thought that the bills were in it. But Mrs. Sykes mended them as you see. Go on with your yarn, my buffer." "That bill I paid to Don John for the Juno," continued Laud. "He paid it to Mr. Leach, the sail-maker, who paid it to Captain Patterdale, and he says it was one of the bills in the tin chest when it was stolen. Don John says he had it from me." "Precisely so; and that is what makes it unpleasant to be suspected of a crime," laughed Captain Shivernock. "But you don't state where you got the bill, Mr. Cavendish. Perhaps you don't wish to tell."