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This was not bad news, and they all entered the hut, where the fire was made up, and one of Patience's rush candles placed on the table with a kind of screen of plaited rushes to protect it from the worst of the draught. Jeph had grown quite into a man in the eyes of his brothers and sisters.
There was a bench on either side of the hut which was lumbered with a confused mass of spars, sails, sou'westers, oil-skin coats and trousers; buoys, sea-chests, rudders, tar-barrels, and telescopes. This hovel belonged jointly to old Jeph and Captain Bluenose. Bax had shared it with them before he was appointed to the command of the "Nancy."
"Strange, he never told me about it," said Bax. "'Cause I told him to hold his tongue," replied Jeph, "and Tommy's a good fellow and knows how to shut his mouth w'en a friend asks him to as I now ask you, Bax, for I don't want people know that I come here every night." "What! do you come here every night?" cried Bax in surprise.
Jeph, however, did not come that day or the next, so that inwardly, the wound-up feeling had passed into a weariness of expectation, and outwardly the stripes had healed enough for Stead to go about his work as usual only a little stiffly.
After coming with Bax to Deal he had been adopted, as it were, by the co-partners of the hovel, and was, so to speak, shared equally by Bax, Bluenose, old Jeph, and Tommy.
"Nay," said Steadfast. "I went down last night to the mill, Jeph, to see whether perchance you might be hurt and wanting help, and after I had heard that all was well with you, I lighted on this poor little maid crouching under a bush, and brought her home with me for pity's sake till I could find her friends."
Stead, afraid to betray by his looks of anxiety, when Jeph came near the spot, sat all the time with his elbows on his knees, and his hands over his face, fully trusting to what all had agreed at the time of the burial of the chest, that there was no sign to indicate its whereabouts.
He would indeed have been more than human if such an unexpected sight, in such circumstances, had failed to horrify him, but the effect of the shock soon passed away. "Who comes here to disturb me?" said a weak voice that evidently belonged to this ghost. "Hallo! Jeph, is that you?" exclaimed Bax, springing forward and gazing into the old man's face.
The little table stood at the bedside, with the large old Bible on it and the bundle of receipts that Guy had placed there on the day he paid the old man's debts. In a corner lay the black coffin, with the winding-sheet carefully folded on the lid. There was no sign of violence having been done, and the friends were forced to the conclusion that Jeph had quitted the place of his own accord.
They reached the hut, the gifts were displayed; and when the young ones, who were all a little afraid of the elder brother, had gone off to feast upon the sweets, Jeph began with enquiries after Steadfast's back, and he replied that it was mending fast, while Patience exclaimed at the cruelty and wickedness of so using him. "Why wouldn't he speak then?" said Jeph.
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