You all know what followed. The Board of Trade appointed a committee to inquire into the circumstances of the loss of the ship Nancy Hazlewood. Tom did not write a letter home, because he expected that every day would be his last in town; but the investigation dragged along until more than a week had been consumed by the committee.
Both Tom and Jack were blamed, because that they had come off with their lives, while the captain and most of the crew had gone down in the ship. Mr. Blakie, of the firm of Blakie & Howard, said some particularly bitter and cutting things, which might have stung Tom very sharply if he had not felt that, by rights, there was not much blame resting upon him.
Mr. Blakie’s words were meant as much for him as they were for Jack, for it was not known that Tom had been taken off the vessel against his will. Jack did not breathe a word of this, and Tom was too proud to seem to want to slip from under the blame, and leave Jack to bear it all. Jack did not say in so many words that Tom had joined him in deserting the ship in the cutter, but what he did say would have led any reasonable man to infer as much. It is quite natural that a man should dislike to carry all of a load of blame on his own shoulders, and there is a great satisfaction in knowing that others share the burden; at the same time, it would have been a good thing for Tom, if Jack had spoken out and told the whole truth, for, as it turned out, it weighed in the balance against him when every scruple told.
But at last the committee dismissed Tom, and he was free to go; little he cared then of their favorable or unfavorable opinion, for the time had come when he might go home.
There was just time to catch the morning stage for Eastcaster, and in half an hour he was rumbling out of Philadelphia, mounted, pipe in mouth, on the outside of the Union stage, with his boxes and bundles safely stowed away in the boot.