“See Sir Angus now,” said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way.  “He’d do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there’s our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking:  I wonder if that’s what my mother means,—­I wonder will my mother compass it.  See Mary Strathsay there!  She’s white and fine, I’ll warrant; see her move like a swan on the waters!  Ay, she’s a lovesome lass,—­and Helmar thought so, too.”

“What are you saying of Mary Strathsay?  Who don’t think she’s a lovesome lass?”

“Helmar don’t now,—­I’ll dare be sworn.”

“Helmar?”

“Hush, now! don’t get that maggot agait again.  My mother’d ban us both, should her ears side this way.”

“What is it you mean, Margray dear?”

“Sure you’ve heard of Helmar, child?”

Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our Provincial lips.  A man—­this Helmar of to-day—­about whom more strange tales were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself.  That the walls of his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known.  That the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor’s roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief.  And there were those who had seen his seraglio;—­but few, indeed, had seen him,—­a lonely man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted by the curse of his birth.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “of Helmar away down the bay; but the mate of our brig was named Helmar, too.”

Margray’s ivory stiletto punched a red eyelet in her finger.

“Oh, belike it was the same!” she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal.  “He’s taken to following the sea, they say.”

“What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?”

“What had he to do with her?” answered Margray in under-voice.  “He fell in love with her!”

“That’s not so strange.”

“Then I’ll tell you what’s stranger, and open your eyes a wee.  She fell in love with him.”

“Our Mary?  Then why didn’t she marry him?”

“Marry Helmar?”

“Yes.  If my mother wants gold, there it is for her.”

“He’s the child of pirates; there’s blood on his gold; he poured it out before my mother, and she told him so.  He’s the making of a pirate himself.  Oh, you’ve never heard, I see.  Well, since I’m in for it,—­but you’ll never breathe it?—­and it’s not worth while darkening Effie with it, let alone she’s so giddy my mother’d know I’d been giving it mouth,—­perhaps I oughtn’t,—­but