"No, sir, for I didn't speak to him until we were alone; and we parted company next morning, for I went to sea."
"When did you next see Hopgood?"
"Well, I didn't fall in with him again for a long while, until this last spring. When I came home from a voyage to China in the Mandarin, last May, I went to my mother's, near New Bedford, and then I found a chap had been to see her in the winter, and persuaded her to give him all the papers in the old chest, that had belonged to William Stanley, making out he was one of the young man's relations. It was that lawyer Clapp; and Hopgood had put him on the track of them 'ere papers."
"What were the documents in your chest?"
"Most of what they had to show came from me: to be sure, Hopgood had got some letters and papers, written to himself of late years under the name of William Stanley; but all they had before the wreck of the Jefferson came from me."
"Were there any books among the articles in your possession?"
"No, sir; nothing but the pocket-book."
"Are you quite sure? Was there not one book with William
Stanley's name in it?"
"Not one; that 'ere book they had in court didn't come from me; how they got it I don't know," replied Stebbins positively; who, it seemed, knew nothing of the volume of the Spectator.
"Where did you next meet Hopgood?"