Pagina 304 de 416

"Then he killed his own father, if what you say is true!" she

added breathlessly. "Oh, the poor wretch! The poor wretch!"

"Yes, that solves it," went on Code, who had hardly heard her.

"That solves the entries that Michael Burns made in his ship's

log before he went to St. John on his last business trip. Nat

swore he could not lose, and the old man, who was honest enough

himself, must have wondered what his son was up to.

"This mirror proves that Nat must have been aboard the schooner

secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with

me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it

clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is

an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and

brought up without the slightest idea of self-control."

"Why, you're preaching to me, Code," laughed the girl, and he

joined her. But she sobered in a moment.