Thereafter Code was to make only such trips as he could spare time for, and Pete was to have charge of the Lass on other occasions.
He had proved himself worth his salt in the eyes of the whole village, and Boughton needed some one to do the heavy work, while he collected most of the profits. This business future, and three thousand dollars in the bank, led Code one day to send to St. John’s for an architect, and to haggle with Al Green concerning the cost of a piece of land overlooking the blue bay.
The very night that Code and Elsa had their last talk Nat Burns was smuggled aboard a motor sloop lying in Whale Cove and taken over to Eastport, where he was turned loose in the United States.
Half of the value of the Nettie was eaten up by his debts and damage settlements, and so, the better to clear the whole matter up, he sold her at auction inside a week and departed with the remnants of his cash to parts unknown.
Since that time not a word or trace of him had been heard in Freekirk Head except once. That was when the St. John’s paper printed a photograph of an automobile that made a trip across the Hudson Bay country.
Beside the machine stood a man in furs who was 305 claimed by all who saw the picture to be Nat Burns. Was he running a trap line in the wilds with the Indians, or was he a passenger in the car under an assumed name?
Elsa Mallaby did not even wait for the departure of the Charming Lass on her second voyage before she acted on a determination that had come to her. She shut up Mallaby House entirely, and, with Caroline as her companion, started on a trip around the world, promising to be back in three years.
But she did not go on the mystery schooner, nor did anybody ever see or hear of it again.
It soon developed that the government officials were hard after the boat that had impersonated a gunboat, and would make it very hot both for owners and crew. Elsa knew this the day she made her final triumphant dash into Freekirk Head, and that was the reason that the ship only stayed ten minutes.
So quietly and skilfully was the whole thing managed that, in the excitement of Code’s arrest, every one thought Elsa and her sister had come on the evening boat from St. John’s.