“What must be the dwelling-place of the Creator Himself when his footstool is so grand?” said the hermit in a low voice.

“That is beyond mortal ken,” said Nigel.

“True—­true.  Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived it.  Yet, methinks, the glory of the terrestrial was meant to raise our souls to the contemplation of the celestial.”

“And yet how signally it has failed in the case of Baderoon,” returned Nigel, with a furtive glance at the hermit, whose countenance had quite recovered its look of quiet simple dignity.  “Would it be presumptuous if I were to ask why it is that this pirate had such bitter enmity against you?”

“It is no secret,” answered the hermit, in a sad tone.  “The truth is, I had discovered some of his nefarious plans, and more than once have been the means of preventing his intended deeds of violence—­as in the case of the Dyaks whom we have so lately visited.  Besides, the man had done me irreparable injury, and it is one of the curious facts of human experience that sometimes those who injure us hate us because they have done so.”

“May I venture to ask for a fuller account of the injury he did you?” said Nigel with some hesitancy.

For some moments the hermit did not answer.  He was evidently struggling with some suppressed feeling.  Turning a look full upon his young friend, he at length spoke in a low sad voice—­

“I have never mentioned my grief to mortal man since that day when it pleased God to draw a cloud of thickest darkness over my life.  But, Nigel, there is that in you which encourages confidence.  I confess that more than once I have been tempted to tell you of my grief—­for human hearts crave intelligent sympathy.  My faithful servant and friend Moses is, no doubt, intensely sympathetic, but—­but—­well, I cannot understand, still less can I explain, why I shrink from making a confidant of him.  Certainly it is not because of his colour, for I hold that the souls of men are colourless!

“I need not trouble you with the story of my early life,” continued the hermit.  “I lost my dear wife a year after our marriage, and was left with a little girl whose lovely face became more and more like that of her mother every day she lived.  My soul was wrapped up in the child.  After three years I went with her as a passenger to Batavia.  On the way we were attacked by a couple of pirate junks.  Baderoon was the pirate captain.  He killed many of our men, took some of us prisoners, sank the vessel, seized my child, and was about to separate us, putting my child into one junk while I was retained, bound, in the other.”