But one living soul was spared—­so the story went.  An only child of the English merchant, a fair and beautiful young girl, whose years had compassed only the early spring-time of life, flung herself upon her knees before the pirate Captain and begged so piteously for life, that he spared her from the general slaughter he had himself decreed.  Something in her pure, exquisitely beautiful face, touched his compassion.  There were murmurs of discontent among his savage crew.  But the strong-willed Captain had his way, and when he sailed back with his booty to their place of rendezvous, he bore with him the beautiful maiden.  Here, it was said, he gave her honorable protection, and had her cared for as tenderly as was possible under the circumstances.  And it was further related, that, when the maiden grew to ripe womanhood, he abandoned the trade of a buccaneer and made her his wife.  The sailor told this story, shrugged his shoulders, looked knowing and mysterious, and left his auditors to draw what inference they pleased.  As they had been talking of Captain Allen, the listeners made their own conclusion as to his identity with the buccaneer.  True to human nature, in its inclination to believe always the worst of a man, nine out of ten credited the story as applied to the cut-throat looking captain, and so, after this, it was no unusual thing to hear him designated by the not very flattering sobriquet of the “old pirate.”

Later events, still more inexplicable in their character, and yet unexplained, gave color to this story, and invested it with the elements of probability.  As related, the old gossip’s second intrusion upon the Aliens, in the capacity of nurse, furnished the town’s-people with a few additional facts, as to the state of things inside of a dwelling, upon whose very walls seemed written mystery.  In the beginning, Mrs. Allen had made a few acquaintances, who were charmed with her character, as far as she let herself be known.  Visits were made and returned for a short season.  But after the birth of her first child, she went abroad but rarely, and ceasing to return all visits, social intercourse came to an end.  The old nurse insisted that this was not her fault, but wholly chargeable upon the Captain, who, she was certain, had forbidden his wife to have anything to do with the town’s-people.

CHAPTER II.

One day, nearly two years after the birth of this second child, the quiet town of S——­was aroused from its dreams by a strange and startling event.  About a week before, a handsomely dressed man, with the air of a foreigner, alighted from the stage coach at the “White Swan,” and asked if he could have a room.  A traveler of such apparent distinction was a rare event in S——­; and as he suggested the probable stay of a week or so, he became an object of immediate attention, as well as curiosity.

Night had closed in when he arrived, and as he was fatigued by his journey in the old lumbering stage coach that ran between the nearest sea-port town and S——­, he did not show himself again that evening to the curious people who were to be found idling about the “White Swan.”  But he had a talk with the landlord.  That functionary waited upon him to know his pleasure as to supper.