years.

Mrs. Pearce died suddenly one day after a few hours' illness.
Just before her death Renie was alone with her in the room.
The woman had been unconscious, but she momentarily recovered
consciousness and summoned the girl to her bedside and
attempted to communicate some parting intelligence, but alas!
she only succeeded in uttering a few disjointed exclamations,
suggestive, but not directly and fully intelligible. The
half-uttered exclamations only served to confirm certain
suspicions that had long floated unsuggested through the
girl's mind, and her disappointment was bitter when the icy
hand of death strangled the communications which the dying
woman was seeking to make.

The girl had formed a sort of attachment for Tom Pearce. The
man was a good-natured, jolly sailor sort of a fellow, and, as
intimated, had always treated the girl with the utmost
kindness and consideration.

It was thus matters stood up to the time of the detective's
strange meeting with the girl upon the beach.

As the girl pointed to the house and concluded the words which
close our preceding chapter, she glided away, and left the
detective to "work his own passage".

During the walk along the beach Renie had been a little more
explicit in explaining her immediate peril, and our hero was
prepared to more intelligently enact the role of the