TAIN.

He was the mildest mannered man
That ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat;
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought;
Pity he loved adventurous life's variety,
He was so great a loss to good society.--BYRON.

While the walls of the cavern seemed wheeling around Sybil, the robber
captain calmly came up to her, lifted his hat, and said:

"Spirit of Fire, I am happy to welcome you to your own appropriate
dwelling place. Behold!"

And he waved his hat around towards the stalactite walls and ceiling of
the cavern, now burning, sparkling, blazing, in the reflected light of
the candles.

"DEATH!" uttered Sybil, under her suspended breath.

"Yes, Death! I told you, Spirit, that Death and Fire were often allies!
But now, as we are no longer masquerading, permit me, Mrs. Berners, to
present myself to you as Captain Inconnu," he said, with another and a
deeper bow.

"That name tells me nothing," replied Sybil.

"What name does more?" inquired the stranger; and then, without
expecting an answer, he turned to Moloch, and said in his smoothest
tones:

"Be so good as to give me this seat, sir."

But Sybil saw that the giant turned pale and trembled like the fabled
mountain in labor, as he left the seat by her side, and slunk into
another at some distance; and she felt far more fear of the graceful
"Captain Inconnu," who now placed himself beside her, and behaved with
so much deference, than she had felt of the brutal "Moloch," who had
treated her with the rudest familiarity. And this fear was not at all
modified by a whisper that reached her acute ears, from the man at whose
side the giant had now seated himself.

"I could a' told you what you'd get, if you meddled wi' the Captain's
gal! Now look out."

But the "Captain" conducted himself with the greatest courtesy towards
his guest.

"Come here, Princess!" he said, addressing the girl, "come here and
place yourself on the other side of this lady. If you are Princess, she
is Queen."

The girl immediately came around and seated herself. And the master of
the house helped his guest to the most delicate morsels of the viands
before him.

Sybil, though in deadly fear of her gentlemanly attendant, accepted
every one of his attentions with a smile. She knew poor child, to whom
she was now obliged to pay court. Her one idea was her husband; her one
want, to be reunited to him, at all