“That’s right,” continued the fiend, “for if you keep quiet, you know, the contents will fall to be divided among you, and the loss won’t be felt by a rich fellow like old Hazlit.”
Maxwell’s heart approved and applauded the sentiment, but a stronger power moved in the rough man’s heart, and softly whispered, “Shame!”
“Why, Maxwell,” said Edgar, smiling, “you look at the box as if it were a ghost!”
“An’ so it is,” said Maxwell, with a sudden and unaccountable growl, at the sound of which the fiend sprang overboard, and, diving into the sea, disappeared from Maxwell’s view for ever!
“Why, what d’ee mean, David?” asked Baldwin, in surprise.
“I mean, sir,” said Maxwell, turning to Edgar with a look of unwonted honesty on his rugged face, “that that box is the ghost of one that belongs to Miss Hazlit, if it ain’t the box itself.”
“To Miss Hazlit,” exclaimed Edgar, in surprise; “explain yourself.”
In reply to this the diver told how he had originally become acquainted with the box and its contents, and said that he had more than once searched about the region of Miss Hazlit’s cabin while down at the wreck in hope of finding it, but without success.
“Strange,” said Edgar, “I too have more than once searched in the same place in the hope of finding something, or anything that might have belonged to her, but everything had been washed away. Of course, knowing nothing about this box, I did not look for it, and found it at last, by mere chance, some distance from the berth she occupied. Why did you not mention it before?”
Maxwell was silent, and at that moment the drift of thought and conversation was abruptly turned by Rooney Machowl shouting, “Dinner ahoy!” with impatient asperity.