.

.

Well, what's the use?
A few days ago come a letter from the Oliver woman in Concord sayin' that this Henry Thomas, Bos'n's father, wan't dead at all, but had turned up there, havin' learned somehow or 'nother that his wife was gone and that his child had been willed a little bit of land which belonged to her mother.

He had found out that Emmie was with me, and the letter said he would likely come after her--and the land.
"That letter was like a flash of lightnin' to me.

I was dismasted and on my beam ends.