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THE SHIPWRECK.
63

Trachalio not being aware of Gripus's connection with the old gentleman, and Gripus hoping that his master will surely give an award in his favour.

When the wallet is opened, it is found to contain, besides valuable property belonging to Labrax, the precious casket containing Palæstra's family relics: and, by desire of Dæmones, she describes the articles which ought to be in it, in order to prove her claim to its ownership. To his joy and surprise, one of these relics, a small toy implement, bears his own name, and another that of his wife. Palæstra is their long-lost daughter, stolen in her childhood, and thus restored. Of course she is handed over to her lover Pleusidippus, a free woman.

The disposal of the claims to the rest of the wallet's contents hardly meets our notions of dramatic justice. Dæmones retains in his possession the prize which poor Gripus has fished up, in order to restore it to its owner; not only without any hint of salvage-money, but with the addition of a long moral lecture to his slave upon honesty. This is all very well; but the subsequent proceedings serve to show that if it was a characteristic of the slave to be always ready to cheat his master, the master had also his peculiar idea of honesty as between himself and his slave. Gripus meets Labrax lamenting for his lost wallet, and as a last hope of making something out of his good luck, agrees to inform him of the whereabouts of the missing treasure for the consideration of a talent of good money paid down. Dæmones, when he comes to hear of the arrangement, ratifies it so far as this: Gripus is his property; therefore, what is Gripus's is his. Labrax