authentic anecdotes of their departed friend. The Reverend Doctor
Folliott proposed that an inquiry should be instituted as to
whether the march of intellect had reached that neighbourhood, as,
if so, the Captain had probably been made a subject for science.
Mr. Mac Quedy said it was no such great matter to ascertain the
precise mode in which the surplus population was diminished by one.
Mr. Toogood asseverated that there was no such thing as surplus
population, and that the land, properly managed, would maintain
twenty times its present inhabitants; and hereupon they fell into a
disputation.

Lady Clarinda did not doubt that the Captain had gone away
designedly; she missed him more than she could have anticipated,
and wished she had at least postponed her last piece of cruelty
till the completion of their homeward voyage.



CHAPTER XI: CORRESPONDENCE



"Base is the slave that pays."--ANCIENT PISTOL.

The Captain was neither drowned nor poisoned, neither miasmatised
nor anatomised. But, before we proceed to account for him, we must
look back to a young lady, of whom some little notice was taken in
the first chapter; and who, though she has since been out of sight,
has never with us been out of mind: Miss Susannah Touchandgo, the
forsaken of the junior Crotchet, whom we left an inmate of a