But Jane never lost faith nor wavered in her trust.  With the old-time love strong upon her she continued to make excuses for this thoughtless, irresponsible woman, so easily influenced.  “It is Maria Collins who has written the letter, and not Lucy,” she kept saying to herself.  “Maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still dominates her.  The poor child’s sufferings have hardened her heart and destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong—­ that is all.”

With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals.  The sheet blazed and fell into ashes.

“No one will ever know,” she said with a sigh.

CHAPTER XIII

SCOOTSY’S EPITHET

Lying on Barnegat Beach, within sight of the House of Refuge and Fogarty’s cabin, was the hull of a sloop which had been whirled in one night in a southeaster, with not a soul on board, riding the breakers like a duck, and landing high and dry out of the hungry clutch of the surf-dogs.  She was light at the time and without ballast, and lay stranded upright on her keel.  All attempts by the beach-combers to float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her.  Only the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its bent keelson buried in the sand.  This hulk little Tod Fogarty, aged ten, had taken possession of; particularly the after-part of the hold, over which he had placed a trusty henchman armed with a cutlass made from the hoop of a fish barrel.  The henchman—­aged seven—­wore knee-trousers and a cap and answered to the name of Archie.  The refuge itself bore the title of “The Bandit’s Home.”

This new hulk had taken the place of the old schooner which had served Captain Holt as a landmark on that eventful night when he strode Barnegat Beach in search of Bart, and which by the action of the ever-changing tides, had gradually settled until now only a hillock marked its grave—­a fate which sooner or later would overtake this newly landed sloop itself.

These Barnegat tides are the sponges that wipe clean the slate of the beach.  Each day a new record is made and each day it is wiped out:  records from passing ships, an empty crate, broken spar or useless barrel grounded now and then by the tide in its flow as it moves up and down the sand at the will of the waters.  Records, too, of many footprints, —­the lagging steps of happy lovers; the dimpled feet of joyous children; the tread of tramp, coast-guard or fisherman—­all scoured clean when the merciful tide makes ebb.