“I will go meet your father and mother and the dear little Lena; I remember them so well,” said Dickory.  He started to run off in spite of his bare feet, but he had gone but a little way when Lucilla stopped him.  She looked up at him, and this time her face was white.

“Are you sure,” said she, “that everything is settled between you and that other girl?”

“Very sure,” said Dickory, looking kindly upon her and remembering how pretty she had looked when he first saw her face over the bushes.

She did not say anything, but turned and walked back to Captain Ichabod.  She found that tall gentleman somewhat agitated; he seemed to have a great deal on his mind which he wished to say, feeling, at the same time, that he ought to say everything first.

“That’s your father and mother,” said he, “stopping to talk to the young man who was born here?”

“Yes,” she answered, “and they will be with us presently.”

“Very good, very good, that’s quite right,” said Captain Ichabod hurriedly; “but before they come, I want to say—­that is, I would like you to know—­that I have sold my ship.  I am not a pirate any longer, I am a sugar-planter, bedad.  Beg your pardon!  That is, I intend to be one.  You remember that you once talked to me about sugar-planting in Barbadoes, and so I am here.  I want to find a good sugar plantation, to buy it, and live on it; I heard that you were stopping on this side of the river, and so I came here.”

“But there is no sugar plantation here,” said Lucilla, very demurely.

“Oh, no,” said Ichabod, “oh, no, of course not; but you are here, and I wanted to find you; a sugar plantation would be of no use without you.”

She looked at him, still very demurely.  “I don’t quite understand you,” she said.  She turned her head a little and saw that her family and Dickory were slowly moving towards the house.  She knew that with diffident persons no time should be lost, for, if interrupted, it often happened that they did not begin again.

“Then I suppose,” she said, her face turned up towards him, but her eyes cast down, “that you are going to say that you would like to marry me?”

“Of course, of course,” exclaimed Ichabod; “I thought you knew that that is what I came here for, bedad.”

“Very well, then,” said Lucilla, turning her eyes to the face of the man she had dreamed of in many happy nights.  “No, no,” she added quickly, “you must not kiss me; they are all coming, and there are the two boatmen.”

He did not kiss her, but later he made up for the omission.

The moment Mrs. Mander saw Captain Ichabod and her daughter standing together she knew exactly what had happened; she had noticed things on board the Belinda.  She hurried up to Lucilla and drew her aside.

“My dear,” she whispered, with a frightened face, “you cannot marry a pirate; you never, never can!”

“Dear mother,” said Lucilla, “he is not a pirate; he has sold his ship and is going to be a sugar-planter.”