“Didn’t I tell ye that I never sot eyes on her?”

“You lie, Captain Tobin.  I have definite proof that a girl was aboard your boat when you reached the stone quarry, and that she was later injured on the head by a stone, and brought by a young man, John Hampton by name, to his home.  Can you deny that?”

The excitement of Mrs. Tobin and Flo was now intense.  They stared in speechless amazement, first at Randall and then at the captain.

“Why don’t ye go an’ git her, then, if she’s with John Hampton?” the captain asked.  “What are ye doin’ here if yer so sartin about the matter?”

“I’m here because there’s nobody home there.  I visited Mrs. Hampton on my way up the road, and she told me that my daughter had never been at her house.  She said a girl had been injured at the quarry, but it was her own daughter.  She suggested that I go to the quarry and make inquiries, which I did.  I learned enough there to satisfy me that Mrs. Hampton lied to me, and that the girl who came up the river with you and who was afterwards hurt is my daughter.  And then when I come back, I find the Hampton house closed, and no one at home.  That’s the situation, and it’s enough to drive a man crazy.”

“It sartinly is most puzzlin’,” the captain agreed.  “Strange, Martha, isn’t it?” and he turned to his wife.  “But, then, perhaps they’ve all gone fer a car ride.  It’s a fine night fer a spin.”

“But Mrs. Hampton told me that her son would most likely be home when I came back from the quarry,” Randall explained.  “It seems to me that I am being deceived and checked on all sides.  I wonder what is the reason?”

“The reason, sir, is very clear,” Mrs. Tobin replied.  “The sympathy of all is with your daughter because of the way you have treated her.  I admire her for what she did.”

“Madame, madame, I am astonished at you,” Randall declared.

“You needn’t be astonished at all, sir.  I have listened to this conversation, and see things in a new light.  I could not understand my husband’s actions a few days ago, but now it is nearly all explained.  Sam’l,” and she turned to her husband, “did you have this man’s daughter on board the ‘Eb and Flo’ the day you sailed by here without stopping?”

“No, Martha, I did not,” was the emphatic reply.

Mrs. Tobin looked at the captain for a few seconds in silence.  Then she detected a peculiar expression in his eyes, and at once surmised its meaning.

“But, Sam’l, did you have a girl on board?”

“Yes, Martha, I did.”

“Then you have been lying.”

“No, I haven’t.  This man asked me if I had his daughter on board, an’ I told him I didn’t.  That gal might have been his daughter once, but she isn’t now.  Any man who would treat a gal the way this man treated that beautiful creature who tumbled into the cabin of the ‘Eb and Flo’ has no right to call her his daughter, so thar.”