On the train travelling westward Mermaid and her aunt had some talk of events, recent and not so recent.

“But why did you take my jewels?” demanded Keturah.

“Because they worried you. They were like a piece of bone, a tiny fragment pressing on the brain,” responded[213] the young woman. “I knew that if they disappeared in such a way as to make it seem that they had been stolen—and I suppose, strictly, they were stolen—the worrying would cease. What made you think of Captain Vanton as the thief?”

“Because it was impossible to think of any one else, I suppose,” said Mrs. Hand. “And while I never guessed that he was the man King, still he evidently knew more about King than any of us did; and King had known or seen Keturah Hawkins and knew of or had seen the stones. Any one might want to steal them who knew about them. And he did.”

Mermaid had a question in turn:

“I should have thought Uncle Ho would have recognized Captain Vanton as the Jacob King he had known in San Francisco.”

“Child, half a century had elapsed between his acquaintance with Jacob King and the appearance of Captain Vanton in Blue Port. Then, those sidewhiskers....”

“Dickie will come out next week,” Mermaid said, absently.

“Are you going to marry young Dick Hand?” Keturah inquired, with her natural abruptness.

“Aunt, you wouldn’t have me marry a man just because he asks me, would you?”

“Well, I hope you wouldn’t marry him without his asking you to.”

[214]“I might ask him.”

“Dickie?”

“Oh, no—that is—I mean—Dickie has asked me, but I mean I might—sometime——” Mermaid seemed unnecessarily embarrassed. Her aunt looked at her intently; then, as if she thought it better to swerve the conversation slightly, remarked abruptly: “Well, old Richard Hand died a natural death at the end of his unnatural life, after all.”

“I don’t think you can call death from fear a natural death,” objected the younger woman.

“Fear! What was he afraid of?”

“He was partly senile, of course, but he could not be convinced that Captain Vanton was really dead. He heard more or less of Captain Vanton’s story. The coroner didn’t give it out, but things like that always get around, or some of them. When they told him that Captain Vanton was Jacob King, he had a stroke. Paralysis. After that he kept looking about him and saying: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’ And when they told him that Captain Vanton had been buried he cried out: ‘Nothing is ever buried. He’ll come to life aga............