"Neen, he comes for a purpose," interrupted Peter.
My father stayed his walk in front of Peter by the fireplace wherein blazed a heap of elm logs.
"Who do you fancy this Captain Rip-Rap to be, Peter? Speak up! You were right when you said Robert is no longer a boy. If there is danger here, he deserves to know of it."
"He is Murray," replied Corlaer, his squeaking voice an incongruous contrast with his immense bulk.
"Andrew Murray!" mused my father. "Aye, 'twould be he. I have suspected it all these years—held it for certainty. But I made sure when he failed to show himself after the last war that Providence had attended to him. It seems I was wrong."
"Whoever he is, this pirate can not do harm to us in New York," I made bold to say.
"Be not too sure, Robert," adjured my father. "He happens to be your great-uncle."
He reached up to the rack over the fireplace and selected a long clay pipe, which he stuffed with tobacco the while I was recovering from my astonishment.
"Your uncle?" I gasped then.
Corlaer hauled forward a couple of chairs, and we all sat in the circle of the firelight, my father on one side of me and Peter on the other. The evening was drawing on apace, and the room was aswarm with shadows a few feet from the hearth. My father stared long into the leaping heart of the flames before he answered me.