"I cannot tell you that, sir, but this morning at about a quarter before eight o'clock, I was about ten minutes' walk this side Old Harbour Bridge. I was going up the road and met your daughter, who was alone, coming down. A few minutes after I had passed her, I happened to look round and perceived that she had been stopped by a young man, humpbacked and otherwise deformed, well known to me as a fellow who used to hang about Old Town, and called by the single word Paul. As your daughter was alone I slackened my pace and continued to look to see what the man wanted with her, and observed that he gave her a letter which she read, and I heard her exclaim on reading it: 'Oh dear! I hope it is not serious,' and she immediately walked swiftly on followed by the fellow called Paul. She turned the bend of the road, and I pursued my way." "I beg your pardon," exclaimed Captain Acton, whose agitation was marked when Mr Adams ceased to speak, "but may I enquire if you are quite sure that it was my daughter whom you met?" "Sir, there is but one Lucy Acton in this country, and no man who has set eyes on her is ever likely to forget her beauty and sweetness." Captain Acton bowed, but his distress was lively. "What sort of a fellow was this who stopped Miss Acton?" enquired the Admiral. "Was he a pauper? Broken clothes, whining voice, the suppliant's demeanour--that sort of thing?" "I have known the fellow by sight some years. He got his living by running errands, and has in his day, I believe, been watched with some attention by the magistrates. He is a red-haired, hunchbacked, long-armed man with rounded legs, and I marked a peculiarity in him whilst he addressed the lady which I have before taken notice of when passing him as he lounged in the sun, or stood waiting in a door: I mean that whilst the young lady was reading the missive, he scratched his left shoulder precisely as a monkey scratches himself." Captain Acton started, and stared hard at Mr Adams. "Did you notice how he was dressed?" he asked. "In a camlet jacket. There was something of the sailor's rig in his costume." "Then the fellow," said Captain Acton, "is steward of the _Minorca_! This gentleman," said he, addressing the Admiral, "has exactly described the figure of a man who passed me in the cabin two or three days ago when I was talking to Mr Lawrence. Judging that he belonged to the ship, and being struck by his appearance, I asked Mr Lawrence who he was, and he answered that he was a poor devil whom he had shipped as a steward or captain's waiter out of pity, and he said something about having once paid a fine for the man to rescue him from a term of imprisonment to which he would have been sentenced for some trifling offence." The Admiral's face wore an expression that was almost imbecile with bewilderment.