attaining a free pardon; and he also knew that he had some
powerful claim upon the interest of Sir Robert Cecil; he knew, moreover,
Dalton's principal motive for bringing over the Cavalier; but with all
his sagacity, he could not discover why he did not, at once and for
ever, set all things right, by exhibiting Sir Willmott Burrell in his
true colours. Robin had repeatedly urged the Buccaneer on this subject,
but his constant reply was,--

"I have no business with other people's children; I must look to my own.
If they have been kind to Barbara, they have had good reason for it. It
will be a fine punishment, hereafter, to Sir Willmott; one that may
come, or may not come, as he behaves; but it will be a punishment in
reserve, should he, in the end, discover that Mistress Cecil may be no
heiress." In fact, the only time that the Buccaneer felt any strong
inclination to prevent the sacrifice Constantia was about to make, was
when he found that she knew her father's crime, but was willing to give
herself to misery as the price of secrecy; then, indeed, had his own
pardon been secured, he would have stated to the Protector's face the
deep villany of the Master of Burrell. Until his return on board the
Fire-fly, and his suppression of the mutiny excited by Sir Willmott and
the treachery of Jeromio, he had no idea that Burrell, base as he knew
him to be, would have aimed against his life.

The Buccaneer was a brave, bold, intrepid, careless man; more skilled in
the tricks of war than in tracing the secret workings of the human mind,
or in watching the shades and modifications of the human character. His
very love for his daughter had more of the protecting and proud care of
the eagle about it, than the fostering gentleness with which the tender
parent guards its young; he was proud of her, and he was resolved to use
every possible means to make her proud of him. He had boasted to Sir
Robert Cecil that it was his suspicions made him commit "_forged_
documents to the flames," at the time when the baronet imagined that all
proofs of his crimes had been destroyed; but, in truth, Dalton had
mislaid the letters, and, eager to end all arrangements then pending, he
burned some papers, which he had hastily framed for the purpose, to
satisfy Sir Robert Cecil. When in after years it occurred to him that,
if he obtained those papers he could wind Sir Robert to his purpose, he
searched every corner of the Gull's Nest Crag until they were