Doctor John reached for the letter and newspaper clipping and turned them toward the lamp.  The envelope was stamped “Rio Janeiro” and the letter bore the official heading of the consulate.

“That’s dreadful, dreadful news, captain,” said the doctor in sympathetic tones.  “Poor boy! it’s too bad.  Perhaps, however, there may be some mistake, after all.  Foreign hospital registers are not always reliable,” added the doctor in a hopeful tone.

“No, it’s all true, or Benham wouldn’t write me what he has.  I’ve known him for years.  He knows me, too, and he don’t go off half-cocked.  I wrote him to look after Bart and sent him some money and give him the name of the ship, and he watched for her and sent for him all right.  I was pretty nigh crazy that night he left, and handled him, maybe, rougher’n I ou’ter, but I couldn’t help it.  There’s some things I can’t stand, and what he done was one of ’em.  It all comes back to me now, but I’d do it ag’in.”  As he spoke the rough, hard sailor leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand.  The news had evidently been a great shock to him.

The doctor reached over and laid his hand on the captain’s knee.  “I’m very, very sorry, captain, for you and for Bart; and the only son you have, is it not?”

“Yes, and the only child we ever had.  That makes it worse.  Thank God, his mother’s dead!  All this would have broken her heart.”  For a moment the two men were silent, then the captain continued in a tone as if he were talking to himself, his eyes on the lamp: 

“But I couldn’t have lived with him after that, and I told him so—­not till he acted fair and square, like a man.  I hoped he would some day, but that’s over now.”

“We’re none of us bad all the way through, captain,” reasoned the doctor, “and don’t you think of him in that way.  He would have come to himself some day and been a comfort to you.  I didn’t know him as well as I might, and only as I met him at Yardley, but he must have had a great many fine qualities or the Cobdens wouldn’t have liked him.  Miss Jane used often to talk to me about him.  She always believed in him.  She will be greatly distressed over this news.”

“That’s what brings me here.  I want you to tell her, and not me.  I’m afraid it’ll git out and she’ll hear it, and then she’ll be worse off than she is now.  Maybe it’s best to say nothin’ ’bout it to nobody and let it go.  There ain’t no one but me to grieve for him, and they don’t send no bodies home, not from Rio, nor nowheres along that coast.  Maybe, too, it ain’t the time to say it to her.  I was up there last week to see the baby, and she looked thinner and paler than I ever see her.  I didn’t know what to do, so I says to myself, ’There’s Doctor John, he’s at her house reg’lar and knows the ins and outs of her, and I’ll go and tell him ’bout it and ask his advice.’  I’d rather cut my hand off than hurt her, for if there’s an angel on earth she’s one.  She shakes