At this happy conclusion to his labours, Frere went down to comfort the girl for whose sake he had suffered Rex to escape the gallows. On his way he was met by a man who touched his hat, and asked to speak with him an instant. This man was past middle age, owned a red brandy-beaten face, and had in his gait and manner that nameless something that denotes the seaman.

“Well, Blunt,” says Frere, pausing with the impatient air of a man who expects to hear bad news, “what is it now?”

“Only to tell you that it is all right, sir,” says Blunt. “She’s come aboard again this morning.”

“Come aboard again!” ejaculated Frere. “Why, I didn’t know that she had been ashore. Where did she go?” He spoke with an air of confident authority, and Blunt — no longer the bluff tyrant of old — seemed to quail before him. The trial of the mutineers of the Malabar had ruined Phineas Blunt. Make what excuses he might, there was no concealing the fact that Pine found him drunk in his cabin when he ought to have been attending to his duties on deck, and the “authorities” could not, or would not, pass over such a heinous breach of discipline. Captain Blunt — who, of course, had his own version of the story — thus deprived of the honour of bringing His Majesty’s prisoners to His Majesty’s colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, went on a whaling cruise to the South Seas. The influence which Sarah Purfoy had acquired over him had, however, irretrievably injured him. It was as though she had poisoned his moral nature by the influence of a clever and wicked woman over a sensual and dull-witted man. Blunt gradually sank lower and lower. He became a drunkard, and was known as a man with a “grievance against the Government”. Captain Frere, having had occasion for him in some capacity, had become in a manner his patron, and had got him the command of a schooner trading from Sydney. On getting this command — not without some wry faces on the part of the owner resident in Hobart Town — Blunt had taken the temperance pledge for the space of twelve months, and was a miserable dog in consequence. He was, however, a faithful henchman, for he hoped by Frere’s means to get some “Government billet”— the grand object of all colonial sea captains of that epoch.

“Well, sir, she went ashore to see a friend,” says Blunt, looking at the sky and then at the earth.

“What friend?”

“The — the prisoner, sir.”

“And she saw him, I suppose?”

“Yes, but I thought I’d better tell you, sir,” says Blunt.

“Of course; quite right,” returned the other; “you had better start at once. It’s no use waiting.”

“As you wish, sir. I can sail to-morrow morning — or this evening, if you like.”

“This evening,” says Frere, turning away; “as soon as possible.”

“There’s a situation in Sydney I’ve been looking after,” said the other, uneasily, “if you could help me to it.”

“What is it?”

“The command of one of the Government vessels, sir.”

“Well, keep sober, then,” says Frere, “and I’ll see what I can do. And keep that woman’s tongue still if you can.”

The pair looked at each other, and Blunt grinned slavishly.

“I’ll do my best.” “Take care you do,” returned his patron, leaving him without further ceremony.

Frere found Vickers in the garden, and at once begged him not to talk about the “business” to his daughter.

“You saw how bad she was to-day, Vickers. For goodness sake don’t make her ill again.”

“My dear sir,” says poor Vickers, “I won’t refer to the subject. She’s been very unwell ever since. Nervous and unstrung. Go in and see her.”

So Frere went in and soothed the excited girl, with real sorrow at her suffering.

“It’s all right now, Poppet,” he said to her. “Don’t think of it any more. Put it out of your mind, dear.”

“It was foolish of me, Maurice, I know, but I could not help it. The sound of — of — that man’s voice seemed to bring back to me some great pity for something or someone. I don’t explain what I mean, I know, but I felt that I was on the verge of remembering a story of some great wrong, just about to hear some dreadful revelation that should make me turn from all the people whom I ought most to love. Do you understand?”

“I think I know what you mean,” says Frere, with averted face. “But that’s all nonsense, you know.”

“Of course,” returned she, with a touch of her old childish manner of disposing of questions out of hand. “Everybody knows it’s all nonsense. But then we do think such things. It seems to me that I am double, that I have lived somewhere before, and have had another life — a dream-life.”

“What a romantic girl you are,” said the other, dimly comprehending her meaning. “How could you have a dream-life?”

“Of course, not really, stupid! But in thought, you know. I dream such strange things now and the............