or Fiymouth, desiring her to receive hirn and liis compa- 

 nion into her house, to furnish them money if they wanted , 

 and to treat them as if they were his children. 



It would have been natural for them, if they left the 

 Swedish ship voluntarily, to have sent on Mrs. Hillyar's 

 letters, and even to have written to her. As Mr. Adams, 

 who soon followed them to England with Captain Hillyar, 

 was probably at his house, he might have known whether 

 she received any notice of them from such letters. 



It is true that it seems almost too late to found any hopes 

 of success upon the inquiries which a knowledge of these 

 facts may now revive on the part of their friends ; but when 

 it is considered how many things are possible which do 

 not appear to be probable, and after all, how nearly possi- 

 bilities are allied to probabilities, sometimes on the side of 

 good fortune as well as of evil, their friends, I am sure, will 

 excuse me for throwing before them these glimpses, by 

 which their course, after they left this place, may be traced 

 farther than it has yet been followed, and which may at 

 last direct themto certainty respecting them, which to many 

 minds is less affecting on such occasions than such double 

 as hang about the history of these mysterious young men. 



I have, sir, delayed sending you these papers longer than 

 was necessary, since I received the information from Cap- 

 tain Henley. It was because I then expected to have been 

 in the United States sooner than I am now certain of find- 

 ing a conveyance sufficiently safe and commodious for 

 transporting thither, at this season of the year, so large a 

 family as I am encumbered with. I therefore will detain 

 them from you no longer on that account, and I accompany 

 them with the observations I have made on the subject to 

 which they relate, not more for the purpose of acquitting 

 myself of a melancholy duty to their relations than from the 

 anxiety which I feel to have what seems to me to be a mys- 

 terious transaction explained, as far as possible, by the 

 Swedish captain. I am sorry that I did not know some 

 years that it was believed in the United States, that the 

 vessel they were in, as well as themselves, never reached 

 England, when these traces of them might have been more 

 useful perhaps than they may be now. 



If this communication should be thought by you to con- 

 tain any thing interesting to Mr. McKnight's friends, it will 

 also be so to those of Mr. Lyman. 



I think he told me he was a native of Connecticut ; that 



