the beautiful
maiden. Here, it was said, he gave her honorable protection, and had her
cared for as tenderly as was possible under the circumstances. And it
was further related, that, when the maiden grew to ripe womanhood, he
abandoned the trade of a buccaneer and made her his wife. The sailor
told this story, shrugged his shoulders, looked knowing and mysterious,
and left his auditors to draw what inference they pleased. As they had
been talking of Captain Allen, the listeners made their own conclusion
as to his identity with the buccaneer. True to human nature, in its
inclination to believe always the worst of a man, nine out of ten
credited the story as applied to the cut-throat looking captain, and so,
after this, it was no unusual thing to hear him designated by the not
very flattering sobriquet of the "old pirate."

Later events, still more inexplicable in their character, and yet
unexplained, gave color to this story, and invested it with the elements
of probability. As related, the old gossip's second intrusion upon the
Aliens, in the capacity of nurse, furnished the town's-people with a few
additional facts, as to the state of things inside of a dwelling, upon
whose very walls seemed written mystery. In the beginning, Mrs. Allen
had made a few acquaintances, who were charmed with her character, as
far as she let herself be known. Visits were made and returned for a
short season. But after the birth of her first child, she went abroad
but rarely, and ceasing to return all visits, social intercourse came to
an end. The old nurse insisted that this was not her fault, but wholly
chargeable upon the Captain, who, she was certain, had forbidden his
wife to have anything to do with the town's-people.

CHAPTER II.

One day, nearly two years after the birth of this second child,
the quiet town of S----was aroused from its dreams by a strange and
startling event. About a week before, a handsomely dressed man, with the
air of a foreigner, alighted from the stage coach at the "White
Swan," and asked if he could have a room. A traveler of such apparent
distinction was a rare event in S----; and as he suggested the probable
stay of a week or so, he became an object of immediate attention, as
well as curiosity.

Night had closed in when he arrived, and as he was fatigued by his
journey in the old lumbering stage coach that ran between the nearest
sea-port town and S----, he did not show himself again that evenin