h he had come.

Before they were out of sight of St. Nicholas they were good friends,
and his lordship was beginning to correct his first impressions of her
and to discover the charm of that frank, straightforward attitude of
comradeship which made her treat every man as a brother. Considering
how his mind was obsessed with the business of his mission, it is not
wonderful that he should have come to talk to her of Captain Blood.
Indeed, there was a circumstance that directly led to it.

"I wonder now," he said, as they were sauntering on the poop, "if
you ever saw this fellow Blood, who was at one time on your uncle's
plantations as a slave."

Miss Bishop halted. She leaned upon the taffrail, looking out towards
the receding land, and it was a moment before she answered in a steady,
level voice:

"I saw him often. I knew him very well."

"Ye don't say!" His lordship was slightly moved out of an
imperturbability that he had studiously cultivated. He was a young man
of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in stature
and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin,
pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden
periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance
a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were
alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this
occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had
brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure
of her answer.

"Ye don't say!" he repeated, and came to lean beside her. "And what
manner of man did you find him?"

"In those days I esteemed him for an unfortunate gentleman."

"You were acquainted with his story?"

"He told it me. That is why I esteemed him--for the calm fortitude with
which he bore adversity. Since then, considering what he has done, I
have almost come to doubt if what he told me of himself was true."

"If you mean of the wrongs he suffered at the hands of the Royal
Commission that tried the Monmouth rebels, there's little doubt that it
would be true enough. He was never out with Monmouth; that is certain.
He was convicted on a point of law of which he may well have been
ignorant when he committed what was construed into treason. But, faith,
he's had his revenge, after a fashion."

"That," she said in a small voice, "is the unforgivable thing. It has
destroyed him--deservedl