“Why, Anson was dead long ago, I thought,” interrupted Mr. Pepper.
“So did everybody else think so; but he wasn’t. He was dead, though, when this feller seed Cap’n Horace, for he’d give the package into the man’s hands when he was dying, for him to send to Cap’n Tarr. But we put into the Cape afore the man got ’round to sendin’ ’em to the States.
“He never knew what a valible thing he was a carryin’ ’round; but when the cap’n come to open the package he found a lot o’ di’monds done up in a separate wrapper. These he hid somewhere about the brig—he tells about it in this letter to Brandon, I b’lieve.
“I wanted to know why he didn’t take ’em on the raft when we left the brig, but it seems he misdoubted himself about a rascally sailor we had with us—one Jim Leroyd.
“This ’ere Leroyd had been snoopin’ around the cabin when the cap’n was given the diamonds, and he thought the feller suspected something. So, not knowing how it might go with any of us, he left the gems on the brig, preferring to risk losin’ ’em altogether, rather than to cause strife an’ p’r’aps bloodshed on that raft.
“An’ I reckon ’twas lucky he did so, fur we had trouble enough with that swab Leroyd.”
“Why, wasn’t he the man who was saved with you?” asked the merchant.
“That’s who.”
“Tell me, Caleb,” said Mr. Pepper earnestly, “why was it he stood the experience so much better than you? Why, he was discharged from the hospital in a week, so I understand, while you show traces of the suffering you underwent even now.”
Caleb closed his lips grimly and looked at the little man in silence for several moments. Then he leaned further forward and clutched his arm with one great brown hand.