would be to transport it to Paris, where I could distribute it better than I could from any other point.  But the trouble was, where could I get the crew to help me?  I have four black men, and I think I could trust them, as far as honesty goes, but they would not be enough to work the ship, and I could not think of any white men with whom I would trust my life and that gold in the same vessel.  But now they seemed to pop up right in front of me.

“’I knew Shirley and Burke pretty well when they were on the Castor, and after what Shirley told me I knew them better, and I believed they were my men.  To be sure, they might fail me, for they are only human, but I had to have somebody to help me, and I did not believe there were any other two men who would be less likely to fail me.  So by the time Shirley had finished his yarn I was ready to tell him the whole thing, and propose to him and Burke to join me in going down after the rest of the treasure and taking it to France.’”

At this point Ralph sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing.  “Edna!” he cried, “I say that your Captain Horn is treating me shamefully.  In the first place, he let me come up here to dawdle about, doing nothing, when I ought to have been down there helping him get more of that treasure.  I fancy he might have trusted me, and if I had been with him, we should have brought away nearly twice as much gold, and at this minute we should be twice as well off as we are.  But this last is a thousand times worse.  Here he is, going off on one of the most glorious adventures of this century, and he leaves me out.  What does he take me for?  Does he think I am a girl?  When he was thinking of somebody to go with him, why didn’t he think of me, and why doesn’t he think of me now?  He has no right to leave me out!”

“I look at the matter in a different light,” said his sister.  “Captain Horn has no right to take you off on such a dangerous adventure, and, more than that, he has no right to take you from me, and leave me alone in the world.  He once made you the guardian of all that treasure, and now he considers you as my guardian.  You did not desert the first trust, and I am sorry to think you want to desert the other.”

“That’s all very fine,” said Ralph.  “You blow hot and you blow cold at the same time.  When you want me to keep quiet and do what I am told, you tell me I am not of age, and that you are my guardian; and when you want me to stay here and make myself useful, you tell me I am wonderfully trusty, and that I must be your guardian.”

Edna smiled.  “That is pretty good reasoning,” she said, “but there isn’t any reasoning needed in this case.  No matter what Captain Horn may say or do, I would not let you go away from me.”

Ralph sat down again.  “There is some sense in what you say,” he said.  “If the captain should come to grief, and I were with him, we would both be gone.  Then you would have nobody left to you.  But that does not entirely clear him.  Even if he thought I ought not to go with him, he ought to have said something about it, and put in a word or so about his being sorry.  Is there any more of the letter?”