Part 28 (1/2)

Jim Dilks and several of his cronies were in the hands of the United States authorities, having been arrested on serious charges.

Later on they were convicted of using false beacons in order to lure vessels on the reefs for wicked purposes, and of robbing the dead cast up on the sh.o.r.e.

A more serious charge could not be proven, though few doubted their innocence.

Darry, or as he was compelled to call himself now, Adrian Singleton, being summoned to give evidence, helped to send the big wrecker to his well-earned solitude by telling what he had seen on the night of the last storm, and as some jewelry was found in his possession, which was identified by the wife of a pa.s.senger who lost his life, and whose body was washed up on the beach later on, there was no difficulty in securing his conviction.

As for his profligate son, he was not long in following the elder Dilks to confinement, being caught in some crime that partook of the nature of robbery, and was sent to a reformatory, where it is to be hoped he may learn a lesson calculated to make him a better man when he comes forth.

Since these happenings took place only a few years back, young Jim is still in confinement; his boon companions Sim Clark and Bowser vanished from Ashley and doubtless sought congenial surroundings in Wilmington, where they could pursue their destiny along evil lines until the long arm of the law reached out and brought them to book.

True to his word, Paul saw to it that Abner Peake was placed in charge of the big farm he owned, not a great distance away from Ashley, and here the former life saver and his family have every comfort their simple hearts could wish for, so that they count it the luckiest day of their lives when the cabin boy of the lost brigantine, _Falcon_, was washed up on the beach out by the life-saving station.

About once a year Abner visits his old chums out on the beach, spending a couple of days in their company and reviving old times, but on such occasions they often see him sitting by himself under the shelter of some old remnant of a former wreck, his calm blue eyes fixed in an absent-minded fas.h.i.+on upon the distant level horizon of Old Ocean, and at such times no one ventures to disturb him, for well they know that he is holding silent communion with the spirit of poor little Joe, who went out with the tide, and was seen no more.

Somewhere upon that broad, lonely ocean his little form has found a resting place, and so long as he lives must Abner drop a tear in his memory whenever he sets eyes upon his watery shroud.

But the Peakes are happy, and the twins are growing up to be buxom children.

There is another little laughing Peake now, a boy at that, and at last accounts Darry--it is hard to call him by any other name--heard that he is destined to be christened Joseph Darry Peake.

After all, Paul and Darry did have a chance to spend some part of the winter cruising together on the sound, although our hero later on decided that he must start in to make himself worthy of the position which was from this time to be his lot, and enrolled at an academy where his fond mother could be near him, and have a home in which he might find some of the happiness that fate had cheated him out of for so long.