After my dinner in town was through with, I rode hard; but it was late night by the time I reached the manor-house.  I found him sitting out under the moon, smoking a cheroot as usual, and he continued to smoke immovably for some minutes after I had delivered the message; but by and by he stood up and took to pacing the veranda, and presently, after his fashion, to speak his thoughts aloud.

“A hundred thousand acres and a thousand slaves, good, bad, and indifferent—­surely a man does owe a little something to his manorial duties.  At least, so all my highly respectable and well-established neighbors tell me.  What do you say, Guy?”

“I never gave much thought to the matter, sir.”

“No?  Well, doubtless you will—­some day.  But d’y’ remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is—­Kingston, Guy—­in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish?  D’y’ remember, Guy, and the day we were lying into Kingston in the Bess and the word came that my uncle was dead?  Aye, you do; but don’t you remember how he used to rail against me?  To be sure—­you were too young.  And yet a good old uncle, who gave me never a mild word in his life but left me his all at death.”

“And why shouldn’t he, sir?”

“Why not?  Aye, that is so.  Why not?  And yet he could have left it to anybody—­to you, say.”

“Why to me?  Who am I?”

“What?  Who are you?” He ceased his pacing.  “That is so, Guy—­who are you?  You with the strange, quick blood writ so plain in your countenance that there—­”

“Isn’t it good blood, sir?”

“Aye, Guy, be sure it is good blood.  But often have I thought how he would have stormed if—­” He gazed curiously at me.

“If—­”

“Aye, if—­but no matter.”  He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond.  The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it.

“No matter that now, Guy.  A good old soul, my uncle, d’y’ see; but the blood was everything to him.  And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it:  that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit.  ’I’ll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.’  His own words.  So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle’s son—­and he is dead—­it goes out of the family.  Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would have none of his property left to—­Oh, but not that, Guy—­no, no, lad.”  He laid a restraining hand on my shoulder.  “No, no, lad, you must not take that to yourself; for you are, no fear, honest born.”