"I have scoured Old Harbour Town and can obtain no information," said Captain Acton; "but it is certain that no one seems to have seen her down on the wharf between seven and eight this morning." "I heard the bell-man recite your notice," said Sir William, speaking leisurely, as one who is tired out; "that, and the bill which they were beginning to paste as I came this way, should help. I've walked my legs off. I have enquired everywhere. I, too, asked if Miss Lucy had been seen down at the harbour at any hour this morning. But my fixed idea was, and still is, that the person who wrote to her through the _Minorca's_ steward was somebody that she helped, somebody in poverty and want, and I called upon everybody likely to know of the existence of such an individual; but to no purpose. The parson, the apothecary, all the tradespeople I looked in upon, could tell me nothing. Once I thought I had run the person we want to earth. Mrs Moore, who keeps the greengrocer's shop, told me that there was an old woman who lived in a cottage just out of Lower Street, out of whose house she had once seen Miss Lucy Acton issue. I got the address, called at the cottage and saw a squalid female who said she was Mrs Mortimer's niece, and that Mrs Mortimer had died that morning at five o'clock. She said it was true that Miss Acton occasionally visited Mrs Mortimer and brought her little comforts and read to her. I got no further. This is the extent and value of my report, and I am as profoundly puzzled," said the Admiral, raising the glass of brandy and seltzer and examining it before he drank, "as I was this morning." "She may turn up at any moment," said Captain Acton, with more gloom than the hope his words expressed justified. "She has only been twelve hours missing." "Only!" cried Miss Acton. "Sir William," she went on slowly, nodding, at him whilst her face hardened, "I have a conviction which my brother does not share. It seems to me, sir, impossible to think of the unexpected and terrifying departure of the _Minorca_ hours before her time, and the conveyance of a letter by the steward of the vessel, without feeling the conviction I speak of." "And what is that conviction, madam?" asked Sir William, from whose jolly round face fatigue had robbed much of its warm colour. "I regret to have to say it," said Miss Acton, "but I must think--I cannot help it, that Mr Lawrence's hand is in this strange disappearance of my niece." Captain Acton slightly frowned upon the old dame, and exclaimed: "I think, Caroline, you should have withheld your conviction, for the present at all events, from Admiral Lawrence."