When I asked if there was a will the captain rapped out an oath.

“’Sdeath! yes,” he cried, “a will in favour of Grafton and his heirs, witnessed by Dr. Drake, they say, and another scoundrel.  Your name does not occur throughout the length and breadth of it.  You were dead.  But you will have to ask Mr. Swain for those particulars.  My dear old friend was sadly gone when he wrote it, I fear.  For he never lacked shrewdness in his best days.  Nor,” added Captain Daniel, with force, “nor did he want for a proper estimation of Grafton.”

“He has never been the same since that first sickness,” I answered sadly.

When the captain came to speak of Mr. Carvel’s death, the son and daughter he loved, and the child of his old age in the grave before him, he proceeded brokenly, and the tears blinded him.  Mr. Carvel’s last words will never be known, my dears.  They sounded in the unfeeling ears of the serpent Grafton.  ’Twas said that he was seen coming out of his father’s house an hour after the demise, a smile on his face which he strove to hide with a pucker of sorrow.  But by God’s grace Mr. Allen had not read the prayers.  The rector was at last removed from Annapolis, and had obtained the fat living of Frederick which he coveted.

“As I hope for salvation,” the captain concluded, “I will swear there is not such another villain in the world as Grafton.  The imagination of a fiend alone could have conceived and brought to execution the crime he has committed.  And the Borgias were children to him.  ’Twas not only the love of money that urged him, but hatred of you and of your father.  That was his strongest motive, I believe.  However, the days are coming, lad, when he shall have his reward, unless all signs fail.  And we have had enough of sober talk,” said he, pressing me to eat.  “Faith, but just now, when you came in, I was thinking of you, Richard.  And—­God forgive me! complaining against the lot of my life.  And thinking, now that you were taken out of it, and your father and mother and grandfather gone, how little I had to live for.  Now you are home again,” says he, his eyes lighting on me with affection, “I count the gray hairs as nothing.  Let us have your story, and be merry.  Nay, I might have guessed you had been in London, with your fine clothes and your English servant.”

’Twas a long story, as you know, my dears.  He lighted his pipe and laid his big hand over mine, and filled my glass, and I told him most of that which had happened to me.  But I left out the whole of that concerning Mr. Manners and the Duke of Chartersea, nor did I speak of the sponging-house.  I believe my only motive for this omittance was a reluctance to dwell upon Dorothy, and a desire to shield her father for her sake.  He dropped many a vigorous exclamation into my pauses, but when I came to speak of my friendship with Mr. Fox, his brow clouded over.

“’Ad’s heart!” he cried, “’Ad’s heart!  And so you are turned Tory, and have at last been perverted from those principles for which I loved you most.  In the old days my conscience would not allow me to advise you, Richard, and now that I am free to speak, you are past advice.”