ers."

"And yet you saw he was not without his friends. You witnessed the
devotion of the men who stood forth in his behalf?"

"I did: and find it remarkable that he should have been able, in so short
a time, to conquer thus completely two so stubborn natures."

"Four-and-twenty years make not an acquaintance of a day!"

"And does their friendship bear so old a date?"

"I have heard that time counted between them. It is very certain the youth
is bound to those uncouth companions of his by some extraordinary tie.
Perhaps this is not the first of their services."

Mrs Wyllys looked grieved. Although prepared to believe that Wilder was a
secret agent of the Rover, she had endeavoured to hope his connexion with
the freebooters was susceptible of some explanation more favourable to his
character. However he might be implicated in the common guilt of those who
pursued the hazards of the reckless fortunes of that proscribed ship, it
was evident he bore a heart too generous to wish to see her, and her young
and guileless charge, the victims of the licentiousness of his associates.
His repeated and mysterious warnings no longer needed explanation. Indeed,
all that had been dark and inexplicable, both in the previous and
unaccountable glimmerings of her own mind, and in the extraordinary
conduct of the inmates of the ship, was at each instant becoming capable
of solution. She now remembered, in the person and countenance of the
Rover, the form and features of the individual who had spoken the passing
Bristol trader, from the rigging of the slaver--a form which had
unaccountably haunted her imagination, during her residence in his ship,
like an image recalled from some dim and distant period. Then she saw at
once the difficulty that Wilder might prove in laying open a secret in
which not only his life was involved, but which, to a mind that was not
hardened in vice, involved a penalty not less severe--that of the loss of
their esteem. In short, a good deal of that which the reader has found no
difficulty in comprehending was also becoming clear to the faculties of
the governess though much still remained obscured in doubts, that she
could neither solve nor yet entirely banish from her thoughts. On all
these several points she had leisure to cast a rapid glance; for her
guest, or host, whichever he might be called, seemed in nowise disposed to
interrupt her short and melancholy reverie.

"It is wonderful," Mrs Wyllys at lengt