you will not be softened by this last appeal, I can’t think what is to become of your affectionate——­” and then the signature.  This document was without place or date, and a voice told me that it had gone likewise without answer.  On the whole, there were few letters anywhere in the ship; but we found one before we were finished, in a seaman’s chest, of which I must transcribe some sentences.  It was dated from some place on the Clyde.  “My dearist son,” it ran, “this is to tell you your dearist father passed away, Jan twelft, in the peace of the Lord.  He had your photo and dear David’s lade upon his bed, made me sit by him.  Let’s be a’ thegither, he said, and gave you all his blessing.  O my dear laddie, why were nae you and Davie here?  He would have had a happier passage.  He spok of both of ye all night most beautiful, and how ye used to stravaig on the Saturday afternoons, and of auld Kelvinside.  Sooth the tune to me, he said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to sooth him Kelvin Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man.  I cannae bear the sight of it, he’ll never play it mair.  O my lamb, come home to me, I’m all by my lane now.”  The rest was in a religious vein and quite conventional.  I have never seen any one more put out than Nares, when I handed him this letter; he had read but a few words, before he cast it down; it was perhaps a minute ere he picked it up again, and the performance was repeated the third time before he reached the end.

“It’s touching, isn’t it?” said I.

For all answer, Nares exploded in a brutal oath; and it was some half an hour later that he vouchsafed an explanation.  “I’ll tell you what broke me up about that letter,” said he.  “My old man played the fiddle, played it all out of tune:  one of the things he played was Martyrdom, I remember—­it was all martyrdom to me.  He was a pig of a father, and I was a pig of a son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear that fiddle squeak again.  Natural,” he added; “I guess we’re all beasts.”

“All sons are, I guess,” said I.  “I have the same trouble on my conscience:  we can shake hands on that.”  Which (oddly enough, perhaps) we did.

Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs; for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old women of the lodging-house persuasion.  But one among them was the means of our crowning discovery.

“They’re not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?” said Nares, as he passed it over.

“Who?” I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been laborious, and I was wearying for bed.

“Trent and Company,” said he.  “That’s a historic picture of the gang.”

I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb:  I had seen Captain Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again.  It was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward:  all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop.  At the foot of the card was written “Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon,” and a date; and above or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted.