and all faults, however heinous in the sight of the law.  She felt that it was not the outward associations which made a man.  She had looked beneath the surface of his soul, and had seen the pure crystal depth of his manly heart—­frank, open, and as truthful as day itself.  To her he was noble, chivalric and true, and if all the world had blamed him, if all had called him guilty, her bosom would have been open to receive him!

Could he have realized this as he lay in chains on board his elder brother’s ship—­could he have known that he was really loved by that fair, sweet and gentle creature, how it would have lightened the weight of the iron bands he bore—­how cheered his drooping spirits.

CHAPTER XIV.

The brothers.

Now commenced a struggle in the bosom of Robert Bramble.  It was some hours before he could recover from the first blush of amazement at the strange discovery he had made.  Not to have had something of a brother’s feelings come over him at such a time, he must have been less than human; and it was between the promptings of blood, of early recollections of childhood, before he grew to that age when his disposition, ruined by indulgence, had led him so bitterly to oppress and injure his brother as to drive him from the home of their youth, and the recollection of those little more matured years, when jealousy at his superior aptness, strength, and success with “cousin Helen,” had made him hate him.

It was impossible for the man to forget the bitterness of the child; besides, had not the same spirit of rivalry ripened, until he found his brother in manhood still his successful rival with Helen Huntington?  The reader will remember that they had all three been children together, and that the last time Charles had looked back at his home, as he started away from it, his eye detected the little form of Helen, where she stood gazing after him.

If there had been any better promptings in the heart of Robert Bramble, they would have turned the balance in favor of his brother, and he would have befriended him; but this he did not do.  He walked his room, bitterly musing upon the singular position of affairs, while he knew very well that Charles lay in chains on board his ship in the harbor.  Then he recalled the memory of his parents, as connected with this state of affairs.  The father was dead, the mother, a weak-minded woman, was also bowed by ill-health; indeed, their early lives had few happy associations.  Robert himself had embittered all its relations.

It was nearly midnight, and the moon had sunk behind the hill that sheltered the harbor on the north, leaving the dark water of the bay in deep shadow.  At long gunshot from the shore lay the ship in which Charles Bramble was confined.  All was still as death, save the pace of the sentinel in the ship’s waist, and a ripple now and then of tide-way against the ship’s cable.  An observant eye, from the leeward side of the ship, might have seen a dark form creep out from one of the quarter ports, and gradually make its way along the moulding of the water-lines toward the larboard bow ports, one of which it stealthily entered.