Springing to her feet, maddened with an undefinable terror, she caught the captain’s hand as he reached out for the fastenings of the door.

“Don’t—­don’t tell them who he is!  Promise me you won’t tell them anything!  Say it’s a stranger!  You are not sure it’s he—­I heard you say so!”

“Not say it’s my own son!  Why?” He was entirely unconscious of what was in her mind.

Jane had risen to her feet at the note of agony in Lucy’s voice and had stepped to her side as if to protect her.  The doctor stood listening in amazement to Lucy’s outbreak.  He knew her reasons, and was appalled at her rashness.

“No!  Don’t—­don’t!” Lucy was looking up into the captain’s face now, all her terror in her eyes.

“Why, I can’t see what good that’ll do!” For the moment he thought that the excitement had turned her head.  “Isaac Polhemus’ll know him,” he continued, “soon’s he sets his eyes on him.  And even if I was mean enough to do it, which I ain’t, these letters would tell.  They’ve got to go to the Superintendent ’long with everything else found on bodies.  Your name’s on some o’ ’em and mine’s on some others.  We’ll git ’em ag’in, but not till Gov’ment see ’em.”

These were the letters which had haunted her!

“Give them to me!  They’re mine!” she cried, seizing the captain’s fingers and trying to twist the letters from his grasp.

A frown gathered on the captain’s brow and his voice had an ugly ring in it: 

“But I tell ye the Superintendent’s got to have ’em for a while.  That’s regulations, and that’s what we carry out.  They ain’t goin’ to be lost—­you’ll git ’em ag’in.”

“He sha’n’t have them, I tell you!” Her voice rang now with something of her old imperious tone.  “Nobody shall have them.  They’re mine—­not yours—­nor his.  Give them—­”

“And break my oath!” interrupted the captain.  For the first time he realized what her outburst meant and what inspired it.

“What difference does that make in a matter like this?  Give them to me.  You dare not keep them,” she cried, tightening her fingers in the effort to wrench the letters from his hand.  “Sister—­doctor —­speak to him!  Make him give them to me—­I will have them!”

The captain brushed aside her hand as easily as a child would brush aside a flower.  His lips were tight shut, his eyes flashing.

“You want me to lie to the department?”

“Yes!” She was beside herself now with fear and rage.  “I don’t care who you lie to!  You brute—­you coward—­ I want them!  I will have them!” Again she made a spring for the letters.

“See here, you she-devil.  Look at me!”—­the words came in cold, cutting tones.  “You’re the only thing livin’, or dead, that ever dared ask Nathaniel Holt to do a thing like that.  And you think I’d do it to oblige ye?  You’re rotten as punk—­that’s what ye are!  Rotten from yer keel to yer top-gallant! and allus have been since I knowed ye!”