He got ashore after havin' been knocked down and dragged in four times
by the undertow. He had only one idea then, thankfulness that he had not
taken the baby with him in the surf. You kin put that down for him: it's
a fact. He got off into the hills, and made his way up to Monterey."

"And the child?" asked the Padre, with a sudden and strange asperity
that boded no good to the penitent; "the child thus ruthlessly
abandoned--what became of it?"

"That's just it, the child," assented the stranger, gravely. "Well, if
that man was on his death-bed instead of being here talking to you,
he'd swear that he thought the cap'en was sure to come up to it the
next minit. That's a fact. But it wasn't until one day that he--that's
me--ran across one of that crew in Frisco. 'Hallo, Cranch,' sez he to
me, 'so you got away, didn't you? And how's the cap'en's baby? Grown a
young gal by this time, ain't she?' 'What are you talkin about,' ez I;
'how should I know?' He draws away from me, and sez, 'D--- it,' sez he,
'you don't mean that you' . . . I grabs him by the throat and makes him
tell me all. And then it appears that the boat and the baby were never
found again, and every man of that crew, cap'en and all, believed I had
stolen it."

He paused. Father Pedro was staring at the prospect with an
uncompromising rigidity of head and shoulder.

"It's a bad lookout for me, ain't it?" the stranger continued, in
serious reflection.

"How do I know," said the priest harshly, without turning his head,
"that you did not make away with this child?"