“And how do we find Duncan Macbean!” cries Captain Jack Paul. “How also is my brother! I trust you have still a bale or two of winter-cured tobacco left that we may add to our cargo!”
“As for the tobacco, Captain Paul,” returns old Duncan Macbean, “ye’re a day or so behind the fair, since the maist of it sailed Englandward a month hack, in the brig Flora Belle. As for your brother William of whom ye ask, now I s’uld say ye were in gude time just to hear his dying words.”
“What’s that, Duncan Macbean!” exclaims Captain Jack Paul. “William dying!”
“Ay, dying! He lies nearer death than he’s been any time since he and I marched with General Braddock and Colonel Washington, against the red salvages of the Ohio. But you s’uld come and see him at once, you his born brother, and no stand talking here.”
“It’s lung fever, Jack,” whispers the sick man, as Captain Jack Paul draws a chair to the side of the bed. “It’s deadly, too; I can feel it. I’ll not get up again.”
“Come, come, brother,” retorts Captain Jack Paul cheerfully, “you’re no old man to talk of death—you, with your fewer than fifty years. I’ll see you up and on your pins again before I leave.”
“No, Jack, it’s death. And you’ve come in good time, too, since there’s much to talk between us. You know how our cousin left me his heir, if I would take his name of Jones?”