“If she is with comfortable folks, they’d not turn her out,” cried Jan.

Lionel took up the letters, and ran his eyes over them.  They told him little else of the facts; though more of the details.  It appeared to have taken place pretty much as Mrs. Verner said.  The closing part of Sibylla’s letter ran as follows:—­

“After we wrote to you, Fred met Captain Cannonby.  You must remember, dear aunt, how often Fred would speak of him.  Captain Cannonby has relatives out here, people in very good position—­if people can be said to be in a position at all in such a horrid place.  We knew Captain Cannonby had come over, but thought he was at the Bendigo diggings.  However, Fred met him; and he was very civil and obliging.  He got us apartments in the best hotel—­one of the very places that had refused us, saying they were crowded.  Fred seemed to grow a trifle better, and it was decided that they should go to the place where John died, and try to get particulars about his money, etc., which in Melbourne we could hear nothing of.  Indeed, nobody seemed to know even John’s name.  Captain Cannonby (who has really made money here in some way—­trading, he says—­and expects to make a good deal more) agreed to go with Fred. Then Fred told me of the loss of his desk and money, his bills of credit, and that; whatever the term may be.  It was stolen from the quay, the day we arrived, and he had never been able to hear of it; but, while there seemed a chance of finding it, he would not let me know the ill news.  Of course, with this loss upon us, there was all the more necessity for our getting John’s money as speedily as might be.  Captain Cannonby introduced me to his relatives, the Eyres, told them my husband wanted to go up the country for a short while, and they invited me to stay with them.  And here I am, and very kind they are to me in this dreadful trouble.

“Aunt Verner, I thought I should have died when, a day or two after they started, I saw Captain Cannonby come back alone, with a long, sorrowful face.  I seemed to know in a moment what had happened; I had thought at the time they started that Fred was too ill to go.  I said to him, ‘My husband is dead!’ and he confessed that it was so.  He had been taken ill at the end of the first day, and did not live many hours.

“I can’t tell you any more, dear Aunt Verner; I am too sick and ill, and if I filled ten sheets with the particulars, it would not alter the dreadful facts.  I want to come home to you; I know you will receive me, and let me live with you always.  I have not any money.  Please send me out sufficient to bring me home by the first ship that sails.  I don’t care for any of the things we brought out; they may stop here or be lost in the sea, for all the difference it will make to me:  I only want to come home.  Captain Cannonby says he will take upon himself now to look after John’s money, and transmit it to us, if he can get it.