after all, they are not as strange as the alternative. For we would have
to believe that Captain Dornton arrived here--where he knew his son and
I were living--without a word of warning, came ashore for the purpose of
going to a hotel and the bank also, and then unaccountably changed his
mind and disappeared."

The thought of the rotten wharf, his own escape, and the dead body were
all in Randolph's mind; but his reasoning was already staggered by
the girl's conclusions, and he felt that it might only pain, without
convincing her. And was he convinced himself? She smiled at his blank
face and rose. "Thank you all the same. And now I must go."

Randolph rose also. "Would you like to take the photograph and letter to
show your cousin?"

"Yes. But I should not place much reliance on his memory." Nevertheless,
she took up the photograph and letter, and Randolph, putting the
portmanteau back in the closet, locked it, and stood ready to accompany
her.

On their way to her house they talked of other things. Randolph learned
something of her life in Callao: that she was an orphan like himself,
and had been brought from the Eastern States when a child to live with
a rich uncle in Callao who was childless; that her aunt had died and her
uncle had married again; that the second wife had been at variance with
his family, and that it was consequently some relief to Miss Avondale
to be independent as the guardian of Bobby, whose mother was a sister
of the first wife; that her uncle had objected as strongly as a
brother-in-law could to his wife's sister's marriage with Captain
Dornton on account of his roving life and unsettled habits, and that