“Bold,” said Cludde huskily, “you’ve returned good for evil.  You don’t want my thanks; you hate me.”

“I wonder if I do,” I said, and pondering the matter, I came to the conclusion that I rather despised than hated him; but I did not tell him so.  “How did you come to this strait?” I asked him.

“I came up to see Lucy, and happened to arrive just after that nigger had been caught.  Vetch was flogging him, told me he was an insolent and lazy scoundrel, and I agreed he ought to be taught a lesson—­”

“Even if it killed him,” I interrupted.

“Why, he’s only a black fellow,” said Cludde.

“And black fellows are flesh and blood, like you and me.”

“But they haven’t our feelings; come now, you won’t say that?”

I would not argue with:  him, and he went on—­“I came to the house, and Lucy refused to see me.  I hated you then, Bold; Vetch told me that you had been up, and I guessed you had put a spoke in my wheel.”

“I never saw Mistress Lucy,” I said.

“What?  Why, Vetch told me that you had proposed to her, and been sent away with a flea in your ear.”

“That was a lie.  But go on:  I will tell you about myself presently.”

“Well, I plucked up courage to go to the house again, and this time I was admitted and saw Lucy, and by heaven, Bold, I had no inkling of what had been going on.”

“You might have guessed, knowing Vetch, whom your own father had sent out here,” I said.

“But not for this,” he said eagerly.  “I beg you to believe me, Bold.  I know there is much against me, but after that business at the turnpike I told Vetch I would countenance no more tricks of that sort—­though I own I helped to arrange your kidnapping at Bristowe.”

“’Twas an insult to Mistress Lucy to send Vetch out here,” I said, refusing to compromise on this matter.  “But go on, let me hear how you came to this.”

“Lucy told me what tricks Vetch had been playing, and begged me to help her to get away from him, and burst into tears, and I can’t stand a woman’s tears.  I sought Vetch, and I told him that he had gone too far, and bade him remember that, whether she married me or not, she is my cousin, and I wouldn’t have her worried.

“‘You’ve got my father’s power of attorney,’ I said to him, ’but that don’t authorize you to do what you are doing.’

“And then the scoundrel rounded on me, and asked me with his infernal sneer what I thought he had come out to Jamaica for, and then, by heaven, Bold, he said that he was going to marry Lucy himself!”

At this I broke into a shout of laughter, the idea seemed so ridiculous; but my mirth gave place to a hot fit of anger when I remembered that the fellow had Lucy in his power.

“I laughed, too,” said Cludde, “but ’tis no laughing matter.  The villain has a parson to his hand—­a besotted Cambridge fellow who has sunk to buccaneering with the pretty crew Vetch has about him.  I said I’d see him hanged first; I’ve been sick of the fellow this long time; and then he threatened me, and in his blazing temper told me about the will which he stole—­”