Thora looked up appealingly to him, with tears on her cheek, saying: "No, Mr. Duke. He was good to me before folk; but he was very hard sometimes."
"And your mother--I mean Mrs. Kinlay--was she good to you?"
"She has aye been good to me; but not like a mother," said Thora, as plaintively as a lost lamb.
"And you never suspected that she was not your true mother?" asked Mr. Duke.
"Not till Colin Lothian spoke to me about it."
"There is certainly some mystery about all this," said the bailie, turning to Andrew Drever. "But it remains with us to communicate with this Mr. Quendale, if he is still alive."
"He is not alive," said Andrew, with conviction.
"Oh, then, you know something of him?"
"Yes," said Mr. Drever; and here he turned to me and asked me, to my surprise, to relate all that had occurred during my solitary voyage in the Falcon. I did not see what possible application this could have to the case, or how it could be connected with the mystery of Thora's parentage. But I related my adventure.
I told how David Flett had been knocked overboard, and of the mate and Jerry leaving me alone on the schooner; of my difficult navigation of her, and of my discovery of the Pilgrim. Here the schoolmaster called the magistrate to give attention, and I guessed that it must be with the ill-fated ship that the mystery was to be in some way cleared. I told how I saw the supercargo seated at the table in the cabin, and how I had read the last entry in his log book.