“Well, Piron, as I have told you, after the peace was made in 1815, I had command of a brig, and took a cruise on the coast of Brazil. After that I was appointed to a thirty-six gun frigate––the old ‘Blazer’––and went, for three years, to the East Indies, and round home by the Pacific. When we were paid off I made a tour in Europe with that boy’s father, Dr. Darcantel, and––”

“But you promised to tell me, Cleveland, something about him.”

“Nothing easier; and, if we have half an hour before we get to Escondido, I will give you all I know, in a general way, of his history. Yes? Well, then, Darcantel is descended from one of the oldest and best Creole families in our State of Louisiana, and the plantations of my family and his father were contiguous to each other on the Mississippi, some leagues up the coast above New Orleans. We had the same tutor when we were children, and we grew up from infancy to boyhood together. He was passionate and ungovernable even as a child; but as he was the heir to a large estate, and his father dead, his weak mother humored and allowed no one to curb him. I myself, one of a numerous family, was put in the navy, and I went away on cruise after cruise, and did not get home again to the old plantation for full seven years. I was a man then, had seen some active service, and I held a commission as a lieutenant in the navy.

“After one of these visits to New Orleans, where his long-forbearing agents had at last awakened him to a bitter sense of his delinquencies, and when mortgage upon mortgage were laid with all their shocking truth before him, he returned and came to me. With all his vices and faults, he was truthful and generous. He told me all, and how he would try to do better, and soothe the declining years of his too indulgent mother.

“I always had great faith in the companion almost of my cradle, and I loved him, I think, better than my own brothers. Well, he spread all his affairs before me, and in my little den of an outhouse on the plantation we both went systematically over the papers. We were two days and nights at the business; and when, at last, I showed him that he would still, with a little prudent economy, have a fair income, and eventually, perhaps, redeem his hereditary property, he burst out in a wild yell of delight, and hugged me in his arms. When he had put away the papers, I said,

“‘Paul, you know I am engaged to be married, and I have not seen my sweetheart for two whole days; she has a sister, too, prettier than my Fifine, whom you have never seen since we were boys together. Come, will you go with me? We can pull ourselves across the river.’

“He hesitated; and it would have been, perhaps, better had he refused to accompany me, for dreadful misery came of it.”

The commodore gave a deep sigh, and touched his horse with the spur.

Here Cleveland bent over his saddle-bow, and if the quiet old horse he bestrode believed the large drops which fell upon his sleek neck came from the clouds, or the drooping foliage of the forest, that animal was never more deceived in his quadruped life. We know that fact, for it stands upon the angelic record.

“Well, my dear Piron, as we entered the little saloon where Fifine was seated at the piano, playing the sweet airs she had sung to me when a little bit of a girl, and her beautiful sister bending over a table near, absorbed in a book, while the candles under the glass shades lighted up her dark passionate eyes and brunette complexion, Paul approached her. It was not love at first sight, because they had played together when children; but it was such a love as only begins and dies with man or woman. The brother came in soon afterward, but there was no love exchanged between him and Paul, and they met in a manner which seemed to revive the early dislike they had entertained one toward the other in boyhood.

“So the time passed, and in the course of a few months Josephine and I were married, and our home was made on my own old place. Still, night by night, in storm, calm, or freshet, Paul pulled himself in a skiff across that mighty river, and we could see the lights shining to a late hour in the little bower. He had changed a great deal, for he loved with the whole force of his fiery and impetuous nature. Pauline loved too, though still she feared him. The brother, however, bitterly opposed their union, and stormy scenes arose. Josephine and I did all we could to put matters on a happy footing, but Jacques, the brother, grew more determined as his sister refused to cast off her lover, till at last his feeling against him broke out into open scornful insult; and though Paul still persisted in seeing Pauline, yet we feared that the impetuous spirits of the two men would, at any moment, burst out into open violence.

“It seems that two days previously Jacques wrote to Paul––I saw the letter––and it was something painful to read; for he not only recapitulated his vices and follies, but he taxed him with being a ruined gambler, who had brought his mother in sorrow to the grave, and ended by swearing, in the most solemn manner, that if he dared again to speak to his sister or darken their doors, he would shoot him like a dog!

“That evening, as usual, the skiff pursued its way across the river, and late at night when it returned there was a fluttering white dress in the stern. Scarcely, however, had the skiff left the bank than a boat shoved out from the other side manned by four negroes, and came swiftly over in pursuit. What afterward transpired I heard from an old married couple of servants who had passed their lives with the family. It appears that Paul, with Pauline in his arms, had barely reached the hall of the great house, and was giving orders to close the doors, when Jacques rushed in with a naked rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paul adjured him, by all he held sacred, not to attack him, as his blood was up, and, unarmed as he was, he would do him a mischief. Pauline, too, implored him by a sister’s love to desist; but seeing him still advance, as she partially shielded Paul, she told him that the man she loved was her husband.

“Blinded with haughty rage, this last admission rendered him ungovernable, and he lunged with all his force at Darcantel. Paul parried his rapid passes, though receiving some sharp thrusts in his arm and shoulder, and still supporting his drooping, terrified wife on his left arm till, by a quick spring, he got within Jacques’s guard, and, seizing him by the wrist, wrenched the weapon from his grasp. This was enough to make the brother totally insane by passion from baffled revenge, when he leveled his pistol and fired. There was a faint cry with the report, and a groan from Jacques as the sword went through his body and heart, till the hilt struck hard against his ribs as he fell, a dead man, on the marble pavement. But the bullet from his pistol had pierced the fair forehead of his sister, and she lay a bridal corpse in her husband’s arms. It was horrible.

What makes the strong man’s eyelids quiver and voice tremble––those eyes that have looked calmly on death and carnage in every shape, with his deep, calm voice cheering on the men to battle at his side? Ah!

“It was midnight, and I walked out to the little grave-yard where my fathers had been buried, and bending my steps to a cluster of magnolias on a little mound by itself, I––I––a––kneeled down beside the sod where reposed all I had loved on earth! I do not know how long I remained there, but presently I heard a groan near by, and a tall man rose up from where he had been stretched, face downward, on the ground, and I beheld Paul Darcantel! I could hardly recognize him at first, for he seemed fifty years older than when we had last parted.

“‘Cleveland,’ he said, in a hollow, choking voice, ‘forgive me! I am a changed, and, I trust, a better man. I have been drawn to this holy spot by the same errand which brought you hither, and though I did not expect to meet you, yet I am glad of it now. Speak, and say you forgive me, and you will shed a ray of hope and salvation into the heart of one who will suffer unto the end! Speak!’

“Old memories crowded around me, and I saw before me the child in the cradle, and with our arms round each other’s necks as we played together. I forgot, for the moment, the sisters lying there––bride, mother, and baby-boy. The magnolias bowed their white flowers in the light of the waning moon, and we fell again into each other’s arms.

“After a time he said, ‘My only friend, I have brought home with me a little helpless boy; he is named Henry, after you, and will take the place of the lost little one lying here. Whoever of us survives shall inherit that estate. Come with me and look at him!’

“He led me to the other mound, and there, beside the tree, a beautiful child lay calmly sleeping, wrapped in a sailor’s jacket, with his curls escaping from a straw hat, and the head resting on one arm on the grave beneath him.

“‘Be good to him,’ Paul went on, ‘for the sake of those we have lost ourselves! His mother’s name was Rosalie.’

“He stooped down as he said this, and, raising the boy in his arms, he kissed him passionately, and then put him gently in mine. ‘Let him kneel sometimes at this grave, my friend, and pray for me.’

“Well, I took the child to the house, where my good mother and sisters went wild over him, and there he passed a happy boyhood. Years went by, and he grew apace, the pride and delight of us all; and as he evinced the greatest fondness for me and the accounts I gave him of my life at sea, I had him appointed a reefer in the navy. Since that he has seen a great deal of service; been distinguished in action; and, on shipboard as well as on shore, liked and respected by all who know him.

“In the mean while his father went away, nobody knew whither, for years and years. He wrote to me, however, and to his son, from all parts of the world; and when I made the tour in Europe I spoke about, Darcantel was my companion. But while there he passed a retired life, never went into society, but visited every hospital in every sea-port from the Mediterranean to Aberdeen in Scotland; for he is not only a surgeon, as I have reason to know, of wonderful skill, but a thorough-bred seaman too; and when he has been with me on board ship there is no one whose opinion of the weather, or other nautical matters, do I place greater reliance on. I could tell you of half a dozen times when his advice to me has saved serious damage. And during all these years Darcantel’s estates, under the careful supervision of my eldest brother, have been redeemed from their load of debt, and now he enjoys a noble income––or, rather, he spends nothing on himself, but devotes it to widows and orphans, and sick or worn-out sailors.

“In the seventeen years which have gone by since he brought his child to me he has made several visits of a month or two’s duration to the plantations, but only when Henry was on leave from duty. Then it was a pleasant sight to see them both together, and the touching air of affection which bound the youth to his father. Henry, from a child, often went and prayed beside the grave under the magnolias, and to this day he believes that his own mother lies buried there. Perhaps it is as well that he should cherish this early belief; for I may tell you in confidence, Piron, that we believe there at home that he is the illegitimate offspring of some erring passion of Darcantel, though none of us have ever learned it positively from his father’s lips. He is not a person to be questioned by any one, not even by me; and as he seems anxious to throw a thick veil over the past, we never venture to draw it aside.

Piron sighed as if a pleasant dream had vanished.

As the cavalcade trotted round the curve of the peak, and then walked the cattle down the steep zigzag road of the beautiful valley, the commodore said, “But, Piron, tell me who that large man is with the black hair and blue eyes.”

“Why, Cleveland, all I know of him is that he landed at Kingston in a vessel from the Isthmus of Panama, and is going to Cuba on his way to England. He came to me, hearing that I was the consignee of old Blunt’s older brig, bound to New Orleans, and so home, to know if he could be dropped at St. Jago, where he has some property or debts to collect; and since the old skipper has no objection, he has taken passage in the brig when she goes with me and my family. I have since met him––he calls himself Colonel Lawton––at dinners of our set, and he seems to be an Englishman or Scotchman. Tom Stewart thinks the latter from his accent, and for his liking for snuff; but Paddy Burns differs, and believes he don’t like snuff, but only takes it to show his splendid box. Any way, he speaks all languages, Spanish, French, Italian, and English, and can talk slang in them all like a native. He has served, too, from his own account, with Bolivar there on the Spanish Main; and he was with Cochrane in that desperate affair of cutting out the ‘Esmeralda’ in Callao Bay. A very amusing, entertaining vagabond he is, and I asked him to join us to make the acquaintance of my people on our last frolic to the valley; but, somehow, I am rather sorry that I gave him a passage with us in the brig, for I don’t altogether like his looks.”

“Neither do I, Piron; his hair is too black for his light blue eyes. However, we must make the most of him.”

Over the shaky bridge of the torrent, where Jacob Blunt prayed earnestly for Martha Blunt, and d––d his donkey as if he had never rocked on water before; Mr. Mouse, with a last tiny kick on the saddle-flaps of his lofty mule, tumbled off; Colonel Lawton swinging himself from the saddle of his barb as if he had been part of him; Tom Stewart, Paddy Burns, and Don Stingo sliding off any way; Harry Darcantel trying to descend in fine style, and failing miserably; Piron and the commodore doing the thing leisurely; Jacob Blunt pulled off bodily; while the laughing blacks took the beasts and led them away.

There were three pair of eyes that watched all this grace and clumsiness from the windows of the saloon. Two pair of dark ones smiled, and the pair of blue opened until they seemed like azure globes, and then they closed until the fringe of chestnut lashes nearly hid them from sight.

“Colonel Lawton, do me the favor to follow my old friend Banou––you too, Captain Jacob, and Lieutenant Darcantel and Mr. Mouse; Paddy Burns and Stingo, here, will show you your quarters in the old billiard-room. Come, commodore, the rest of us will find quarters in the casa.”

An hour later the saloon and sala were all alight, and the sashes of the jalousies closed, for it was cool at times up there at Escondido. There, too, stood the party of gentlemen, Mr. Mouse being a prominent figure in the background. Then came a rustling of robes, and as the great folding doors swung open, the three ladies lit up the saloon in a halo of loveliness with brighter rays than were shed from the wax-lights in the chandelier. Two fair hands were placed in those of Cleveland, and the look which accompanied went back to the happy morning on the old brig’s deck, away off there to sea.

“Oh, monsieur, I can not say how glad I am to see you once more! Let me present you to my sister, Madame Nathalie Delonde, and our daughter. Ah! my dear Captain Blunt, both your children before you again, and you have come to take us away.”

“Colonel Lawton, ma chère,” said Piron.

“And, mesdames,” said the commodore, “let me also present my nephew, Lieutenant Darcantel, and Mr. Mouse.”

“Yes, madame. This is my nephew, Henry Darcantel.”

“Ah! Henri! Excuse me, monsieur. I am charmed to see you!”

Why, now, did the touch of his hand make her heart beat faster, and send a thrill of joy through her frame? Only be a little calm, madame, for a while longer, and don’t be sad and ponder all night, like your good Jules Piron does habitually. Wait; Jules will tell you all he knows when you are alone to-night.

The doors of the sala were thrown open. The broad pennant leading with Madame Rosalie; the military chieftain marching beside Madame Nathalie, much to the animosity of Paddy Burns. Then Mr. Mouse convoying mademoiselle, to the infinite disgust of the commander of the “Rosalie,” one-gun schooner, formerly the “Perdita.” But what made that old negro in spotless white, standing at the door, jerk his head back and open his great eyes till there was no black left in them? And why did he blunder about the table afterward, and pour wine over the colonel’s richly-laced coat, while staring like an ogre at the young blue-jacket opposite? That old Banou, perhaps, did not like to see his young mistress too much attended to by every gay scamp who came near her. Oh no; of course not. But then, if that brawny negro in white had only known over whose arm and mutilated hand he was pouring light wine in his abstraction, he would have crammed that heavy cut decanter in powdered glass splinters down the chieftain’s throat. There would have been claret of a different color spilled then––quantities of it. You needn’t feel in your pockets, colonel, or look round the sala to see if perchance there is a green silk rope squirming from the ceiling. We don’t keep any of those pretty things out at Escondido. So go on with your dinner, you cold-eyed scoundrel, and tell all the lies you can to that lovely woman at your elbow; how you wanted to save Bolivar’s life, and it was saved without you. Don’t forget, either, to tell her how that patriot had you drummed out of his army, suspecting you of having assassinated the officer near you in the confusion of battle, and robbing him of his watch to replace the one presented to you by the captain general. Paddy Burns is watching you, Colonel Lawton, and that whole-souled little Irishman is not the man to be trifled with. Now remove the covers. But take care, Banou––you nearly twitched off the military gentleman’s hair. Tom Stewart saw it, and he noticed, too, a broad red seam, like the track of a musket bullet––honorable wound, no doubt––under your black glossy wig.

Commodore Cleveland talked in a low tone, all through the dinner, to the lady who did not eat at the head of the table, but who occasionally rested her white hand, with a trustful reliance, on the great tanned-leather paw of Jacob Blunt, that honest mariner not wishing to talk to any body, man or woman. That ancient mariner was mentally cursing donkeys; speculating how he should get back to the “Martha Blunt” brig, in Kingston harbor; and praying for Martha Blunt, wife, riding at single anchor near Plymouth beach. Piron took wine with every body, said a word or two all around the table, and talked to Tom Stewart about certain business matters connected with the plantation when he had gone.

Then came the last course, and the dessert of delicious fruits, which quite stopped Mr. Mouse’s mouth, and even his palpitating heart ceased beating; while Mademoiselle Rosalie nibbled some lady-finger biscuit, and bent her graceful head to listen to the music of the earnest lips beside her.

We told you, miss, how it would be; and, in spite of the warning, there you are––the color coming and going over your girlish cheeks, and never saying a word! “What a couple that would make!” thought Madame Nathalie. And what a resemblance in expression there is between them––he with his dark hair and eyes, and she fair and blue. Be careful, my sweet Rosalie! And so thought her sister and her sister’s husband; Stingo, too, old Banou, and every one save Tiny Mouse, who had no rivals but Rat, Beaver, and Martin, and he could take the wind out of their sails any day.

The party of ladies rose from the table, and leaving the men––all except the captain of the “Rosalie” and Mr. Mouse, who would have remained had he not seen a shake of the broad pennant’s finger––went into the saloon. Then there was a brilliant prelude on the piano, a touch of a guitar by stronger fingers, an air from an opera, a song or two, much conversation––while Reefer Mouse slept on the sofa––and coffee. Then it was late; every one was fatigued, bon soirs were said, and the party––coffee and all––separated.

In a great square room, standing, as usual, on cocoa-nut stilts, which had once been used for a billiard-room, were half a dozen iron-framed cots, ranged along the walls, in which some of the Escondido’s guests were to bivouac. Every thing, however, was tidy and comfortable; snow-white bedclothes and gauze musquito nets, lots of napkins and ewers, and things for bathing behind a screen of dimity curtains; and not forgetting a large table––vice the billiard-table––in the centre, on which stood plenty of sugar and limes, cinnamon and nutmeg, bottles and flasks, red and white, and––very little water, in jugs.

“I say, Mouse, keep quiet, will you, and let me go to sleep!” Harry Darcantel did not think of going to sleep; that was a fib he told the reefer; he wanted merely to shut his eyes and dream of––you know who––a tall, graceful girl with blue eyes and light hair, who looked at him once or twice such looks that there was no sleep for him for ever so long. What did she say? Why, she never opened her pouting lips to show those even pearly teeth. She only looked out of those soft blue eyes. That was all!

“Mr. Darcantel, I think of getting married.”

“The d–– you do! And who to, pray?”

“Why,” said Mr. Mouse, as he rolled over and kicked the sheet off his slate-pencil built legs, “I haven’t made up my mind; but do you know that that pretty girl up there at the big house has taken quite a fancy to me, and when you were presented to her mother she gave me such a squeeze of the hand! Oh my!”

Here Mr. Mouse’s narrative was cut short by a pillow hitting him plump on the mouth, clean through his musquito net.

“Very charming young lady, Mr. Mouse,” said a quiet voice, in a cool tone, on the other side of him; “she did seem to take a violent fancy to you.”

Mr. Mouse rolled over, and then, sitting up in his cot, replied, “Yes, sir! and that was her mother sitting by you when the big nigger in white capsized the wine over your sleeve, and nearly pulled your a––hair off.”

Look out, Mr. Mouse! If that man there beside you once gives a twitch at your curls, he’ll pull something more than hair––perhaps a little scalp with it!

“Oh!” was the sound that came back.

“Yes, sir; and the other beautiful lady next the commodore is her sister. She had a son just mademoiselle’s age, who was murdered by pirates off Jamaica ever so many years ago, and Commodore Cleveland chased them in a ship he was first lieutenant of––my father commanded the ship––she was the old ‘Scourge.’”

“Hold your tongue!” came from the cot where the spare pillow was thrown from.

“Ho!” said the military chieftain; but if the room had not been so dark, the way his eyes opened and emitted an icy glare of surprise would have made Tiny Mouse shiver with cold.

“Oh dear, yes, colonel, I heard the commodore tell all about it the other night on board the frigate. He thought I was asleep, but I kept awake through the best part of it.”

“The best part of it?”

Not every one, Mr. Mouse. There is the very greatest of those scoundrels grinding his teeth and glaring your way at your elbow.

“What was the name of that cape, Darcantel, where the schooner was destroyed? No, I won’t be quiet; the colonel wants to hear all about it. There’s a good fellow, tell me!”

“Garotte Cape.”

The listener slowly raised the mutilated hand, and put the finger with the sapphire ring to his throat, evidently not liking the name of that cape, for it caused a choking sensation to utter it––“Ho! Cape Garotte!”

“Yes, sir; and Darcantel’s father here once chartered a vessel, and went all the way down there to explore the place, and was gone fifteen months! Wasn’t he, Darky?” said the boy, familiarly.

“Mouse, I tell you what it is, if you don’t shut up that little flytrap of yours, I’ll make Rat lick you when you go on board!”

“Rat lick me?” said Tiny, as he jumped straight up in the cot; “I gave him and Martin a black eye apiece only on our last boat-duty day for saying your father, the doctor, had killed his brother-in-law in a duel!”

“Hush, my dear little fellow! you did a very foolish thing. There, say no more on that subject; it gives me pain, my Tiny. So talk on as much as you like.”

“My dear friend,” exclaimed the lad, in a broken voice; as he plunged through his net and put his arms around Darcantel, “I wouldn’t grieve you for the world; but do you suppose, little as I am, that I wouldn’t fight for the doctor, who is so kind to me, and has done so much for my poor dear sweet mother?”

Here there was a sob as he wound his arms closer round his friend’s neck, and cried like a child, as he was.

“Well, never mind, Tiny; go to sleep, now! I am not angry. There, turn in!”

“I won’t speak another word to-night, Harry, for any soul breathing––little fool that I am!”

“I beg your pardon, monsieur,” said the colonel, in French, with a slight quiver on his tongue, “but did your father really go all the way down to Darien out of mere curiosity?”

“Yes, sir, he did go there to see if by any chance one of the pirates had escaped; and he traveled, too, a good deal about among the Indians, making inquiries.”

“Ho! and did he pick up any information there?”

“Oh! no other motive than curiosity?”

“Perhaps he had; for he once told me he had some old scores to settle with the man who commanded the pirate, and if he was alive he felt quite sure he would, one of those days, put him to death. My father, sir, is a very determined person, and never forgets an oath.”

“Truly, monsieur, you interest me. But what sort of a man in appearance is your father––a doctor, I think you said?”

“He is a tall gentleman of about fifty, sir, though he looks much older; for he has suffered deeply in early life, when my mother––a––died; but I shall have the pleasure of introducing him to you, colonel. He is now on board our frigate at Kingston, and told me he would be up here to-morrow or the next day.”

“Ah! thank you extremely, Monsieur Darcantel. I shall have––a––much curiosity to see him.”

No more words that night; but much thinking and moving of thin lips, and eyes staring in the dark, wide open. There was low grating of teeth, too! And a man lay in that large room on a narrow cot, surrounded by a gauze net; and, so far as mental torture went, it was not unlike a trestle net we once saw without gauze, where a gaunt frame was stretched, with myriads of sand-flies, musquitoes, and stinging insects sucking his heart’s blood. Sometimes the eyelids closed, as if they were a film of ice forming over the blue cold orbs within; and again the fabric cracked, and they were wide open once more. They could read, too, those frozen orbs; and like heavy flakes of snow falling on bloodstained decks, till it covered with a weight of lead the stark, stiff corpse beneath, they yet tried to pierce into the dark region beyond. And the heart beat with a slow and measured tramp, like a moose crunching through the sharp, treacherous crust of snow, and then stood stock-still! Had a letter, traced with the fingers of an icicle, been congealed a hundred feet deep in the heart of a toppling iceberg on the coast of Labrador, those eyes could have read it as clear as day!

“You infamous pirate, Captain Brand!” it began––“the son of the man who destroyed the ‘Centipede’ and her crew, and the boy whom your brutal mate tore from the mother you saw at dinner to-day, are near you! That calm, stern, determined doctor, too, whom you laced down on the trestle for poisonous insects to kill, has been on your track for the past seventeen years, and will soon hold you in his iron gripe! There will be no mercy then!”

The eyes closed, the heart stopped beating, and the thin lips and tongue, as dry as cartridge-paper, now took up the strain, while the mutilated hand clutched convulsively, as if there were fifty fingers fingering knives and pistols.

“Shall I assassinate my old doctor, and run the risk of being arrested and hung? No! He thinks me dead, and I will go back to the island, redeem my treasure, and pass the remainder of my life tranquilly in the highlands of Scotland!”

Don’t be too sanguine, Colonel Lawton; for, though your ten thousand pounds in gold is still in the vault, yet there is Don Ignaçio Sanchez, whose estates have been confiscated, and who has just got out of ten years’ imprisonment in the Moro of Havana, glad to save his neck from the iron collar, and, without the little jewel-hilted blade up his sleeve, is now turning about to see how he may redeem his lost fortunes. Don’t be an hour too late, I pray you, Captain Brand, for that sharp eye of Don Ignaçio has already, perhaps, looked at the shiny cleft in the crag, and thinks he knows what lies hidden there! Oh, si! nothing but mouldy beans and paper cigars to live upon for ten years, and fond of more substantial food, even though it were yellow greenish gold, mildewed by damp, but yet solid and refreshing. Cierto––certainly! Quien sabe––who knows?

But be careful, Don Ignaçio! Don’t take your old wife with you on that projected expedition, for you have treated that old woman––who resembles a rotten banana––badly! You have won back in monté all she ever won by cheating, besides the half ounces you used to give her for the Church––cheated her by drawing two cards at a time when you saw the numerals with that spark of an eye, and when you knew that she would win if you drew fairly! Yes, you have, you old sinner, for more than two score of years! And she hates you now––though you don’t think it––worse than you did Captain Brand! Have an eye to that old banana!

So passed that short night––long enough, however, for somebody––and before the fresh land-wind had woke up to creep down the valley, there was a mettled barb, with open nostrils, galloping up the broken road as if he had the devil on his back––as perhaps he had, or Colonel Lawton, or Captain Brand, possibly all three, but it makes very little odds to us.

It was a delightful breakfast with the merry party at Escondido as they sat under the wide, cool piazza in the shade, with the sun throwing his slanting rays through the vines and clusters of purple grapes, and through the orange-trees, where the yellow fruit was fast losing its fragrant dew––all the men once more in summer rig, and the ladies in flowing muslin and tidy caps.

“My dear,” said Piron to his wife, “we have lost one of our guests, Colonel Lawton; he went away at daylight this morning, and left a message to me, and compliments to you all, that business of importance, which he had forgotten, demanded his immediate return to Kingston.”

“Ah! Monsieur Burns, think you I would prefer a scarlet coat when––”

“You might get a blue!” broke in Paddy, with a comical twinkle of his eye, as he winked in the direction of Commodore Cleveland, who sat opposite.

“No, no,” exclaimed the pretty widow, hastily, as she shook her finger at her despairing admirer, “that is not what I was going to say––when those red coats there from England killed my poor husband at Quatre Bras.”

“What a droll man you are, Monsieur Burns,” replied the widow, laughing outright, “when you know you would prefer a jug of Antigua punch, any day, to me. Stop, now! didn’t you say, at your grand dinner in Kingston, that you would never allow a woman to darken your doors?”

“I––a meant––a black woman, my dear; as true as me name’s Paddy Burns, I did!”

“What are you two laughing at, my sister?”

“Why, here is Mr. Burns making love to me at breakfast, and before night he will be abusing me for not pouring enough rum in his punch!”

“That’s his caractur, Madame Nathalie; for I, Tom Stewart, am the only person he ever loved, and he sometimes offers to shoot me for giving him unco’ good advice.”

“Howld yer tongue, ye divil ye! and you too, Stingo, or the pair of ye shall niver taste another sip of the old claret. Ye’ve ruined me cause entirely! But I’ll lave ye me property, madame, when I’m gone.”

“He’s been talking of going, Nathalie,” said Piron, “for the last twenty years, and has left his estate to at least thirty women, to my certain knowledge; but he hasn’t got off yet, and––”

“Tom Stewart, ye miserable limb of the law! make out me will this very night.”

Jacob Blunt unclosed his salt-junk mouth, and roared out in a peal of laughter that would have shivered his old brig’s spanker, and caused, perhaps, Martha Blunt, sposa, to have spanked him, Jacob, had she heard and seen that mariner wagging his old bronzed face at the lovely woman facing him.

Mr. Tiny Mouse, who could not touch bottom on his high chair, with his little heels dangling about, forgetful of discipline, fairly kicked the broad pennant on the shins of his white ducks, screaming joyously; the three women made the piazza vibrate with their musical trills; Stingo and Stewart choked; Cleveland and Darcantel were amused; and old black Banou looked at his master, and grinned till his double range of teeth seemed like a white wave breaking at the cove. And then Paddy Burns took up the chorus, and after one or two Galway yells his friends took him up, thumped him smartly on the back, and stood him up against one of the posts of the piazza to have his laugh out. When he did, however, recover the power of speech, he wiped his eyes and looked around till they rested on Madame Nathalie, when, with his white napkin held up like a shield beside his rubicund visage, he spluttered,