“That was on the Saltypool,” Fancy nodded.  “And oh!  Cap’n Hocken, I am so sorry! but that hundred pound o’ yours is at the bottom of the sea.”

“Well, my dear,” said Cai after a pause, pulling a wry face, “to do your master justice, he warned me ’twas a risk.  There’s naught to do but pay up un’ look pleasant, I reckon.  ’Twon’t break me.”

“Cut the loss, you mean.  The shares was paid up in full, and there can’t be no call.”

“You’re knowledgeable, missy:  and yet you’re wrong this time, as it happens.  For (I may tell you privately) the money didn’ belong to me, but to Mrs Bosenna, who asked me to invest it for her.”

“Oh!—­and Cap’n Hunken’s hundred too?”

Cai reached a hand to the mantelpiece for the tobacco-jar, filled a pipe very deliberately, lit it, and drawing a chair up to the table, seated himself in face of her.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said he, resting both arms on the table and eyeing her across a cloud of tobacco-smoke.  “Though I don’t understand what she—­I mean, I don’t understand what the game was.”

“Me either,” agreed the child, musing.  “No hurry, though:  I’ll be a widow some day, please God—­which is mor’n you can hope.  But now we get to the point:  an’ the point is, you can pay the woman up.  Cap’n Hunken can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He don’t know it yet, but he can’t.”

“So you said:  an’ Why not?  I ask.  Within a thousand pound ’Bias owns as much as I do.”

The child stood up, pulled her chair across to the table, and reseating herself, gazed steadily across at him through the tobacco-smoke.

“Where d’ye keep your bonds an’ such like?” she asked.

“In my strong box, for the most part:  two or three in the skivet of my sea-chest.”

“You got ’em all?”

“All.  That’s to say all except the paper for this hundred pounds, which ’twas agreed Rogers should keep.”

“You’re a lucky man. . . .  Where did Cap’n Hunken keep his?”

“Darn’d if I know.  Somewheres about.  He was always a bit careless over his securities—­and so I’ve told him a dozen times,”

“When did you tell him last?”

This was a facer, and it made Cai blink.  “We haven’t discussed these things much—­not of late,” he answered lamely.

“I reckoned not.  He don’t keep ’em in his strong-box?”

“He hasn’t one.”

“In his chest?”

“Maybe.”

“But he don’t.  He’s left ’em with Mr Rogers from the first, or I’m mistaken.  I used to see the two bundles, his and yours, lyin’ side by side on the upper shelf o’ the safe when the old man sent me to unlock it an’ fetch something he wanted—­which wasn’t often.  Then, about six months back, I noticed as one was gone.  I mentioned it to him, and he said as ‘twas all his scrip—­that was his word—­made up in a parcel an’ docketed by you, and that some time afterwards you’d taken it away.”