“They—­they know—­”

“They know they sent to jail the wrong girl.  The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote ’em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her.  They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the pawnbroker and the store detective, and—­and a lot of other folks.  Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated.”

She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.

“Six months!  As long as I have been down here!  Oh, Tunis!  While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here—­and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out.  And—­and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done.”

“Huh!  Yes.  I cal’late that’s so, Sheila,” he said.  “But how about me?  Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you?  Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought.  There is for me, at any rate.”

She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham’s very soul.  His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden.  She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap’n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis.  But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self gain.

And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that passing moment with all the passion which filled her heart for him.  Had Tunis not been steering the Seamew through a pretty tortuous channel at just that moment there is no knowing what he would have done—­spurred by Sheila’s look!

CHAPTER XXXIII

A HAVEN OF REST

Wreckers’ Head so shelters the cove from the northeast that the schooner could be brought safely in to Luiz Wharf, instead of dropping her anchor in deep water.  Half the port, and all of Portygee Town, crowded nearby wharves and streets to welcome Tunis Latham’s schooner; for news of her peril and the way in which help had reached the Seamew had come down from the Head as on the wings of the wind itself.

There was one face on the wharf Tunis Latham sought out with grim persistency as the schooner was made fast.  He had purposely placed Sheila in Zebedee Pauling’s care.  Tunis kept, directly under his hand, the broken oar which had helped to make so much of his recent trouble.  When the Seamew was safe, her skipper leaped ashore.  And he carried the broken oar with him.

Orion, grinning and sneering by turns, saw his cousin coming.  It must have been preternatural sagacity which caused him to see and recognize the broken oar.  Having seen it, he jumped for the head of the wharf.