Entering with this figure, we shall soon find it to be Leonard Hust, who now, watching an opportunity, slipped into the apartment where the young commander had been confined since he left the factory of Don Leonardo.  No sooner was the door closed quietly, so as to avoid the observation of the watch between decks, than the new comer opened a secret lantern and discovered himself to the prisoner, at the same time cautioning him to silence.

“Who are you?” coolly asked Charles Bramble, for thus we must know him in future.

“Leonard Hust,” was the reply; “your friend, as I will soon prove.”

“But it is only a few hours since you were giving witness against me.”

“That is true; but bless you, sir, there has been a great change in matters since that.”

“So I thought, by the movements I observed, though I did not understand them.”

“Hist! speak low, sir,” said the other, “and while I am talking to you, just let me, at the same time, be filing off these steel ornaments upon your wrists!”

“File them off?  Well, then, you must, indeed, be a friend,” said the prisoner.

“Leave me to prove that.  Sit here, so the light will fall on them, with your back this way, that will keep the light from showing between decks.  So, that is it.”

“But what was it made your voice and the sound of your name affect me so this morning?  I could not divest myself of the feeling that, I had heard it somewhere before.”

“Heard it? bless you, sir, I rather think you have heard it before,” said the fellow, as he worked industriously with his file upon the handcuffs.

“Well, where, and when; and under what circumstances?” asked the prisoner, curiously.

“That is just what I am going to tell you, sir; and you see, master Charles—­”

“Master Charles,—­Charles,—­why do you call me that name?”

“Why, you see, that is your name, to be sure.  Charles Bramble, and you are Captain Robert Bramble’s brother, and—­take care, hold still, or the file will cut you.”

“How,—­do not trifle with me,—­what is this which you are telling me?”

“Indeed, sir,—­indeed, it is all true,” said the other, half frightened at the effect his words had produced upon the prisoner, who now stepped away from him and stood aloof, withdrawing his wrists from the operation which Leonard Hust was performing.

“Come hither, Leonard Hust, if that be your name,” he said; “sit here and tell me what this business is that you refer to.  No blind hints, sir, but speak out plainly, and like a man.”

Thus interrogated, the man did as he was directed, and went on to tell the commander of the “Sea Witch” his story, up to the time when he was lost to his parents and friends.  How he had never been kindly treated by his elder brother, who, indeed, drove him from home by his incessant oppression.  He referred to that last gallant act he had performed, by saving his mother’s favorite dog, and how little cousin Helen (she is the same as Miss Huntington) had seen it all, and had thanked him over and over again for it, and a thousand other reminiscences, thread by thread, and link by link, filling up the space from earliest childhood to the hour when he had left his home at Bramble Park.