“You come off a long journey?” asked my uncle, at the end.
“Off a long journey, sir—a journey of six years. I had hardly expected to find this haven by the way. I hardly know now what it means; yet Fate grant it has a meaning!”
“You are making a considerable stay?”
“If I have not lost the faculty to rest. I don’t know. I am all confounded at present.”
“He is seeking for a treasure hidden on these coasts,” I put in, and I could have put in nothing apter. My uncle kindled.
“A treasure!” he cried. “Why, so am I, Mr. Pilbrow. Only, I gather, I have the advantage of you in having already collected a part of mine. And did you read of yours, too, in Morant?”
“Morant, sir!” said the bookseller. “No, his name was Victor—Carolus Victor.”
He checked himself instantly—jealously. He had been carried away emotionally, I think, over his reception. But in the same breath his reserve was gone.
“You shall have the whole story from me,” he said; “but not now. Give me time to order my thoughts, to realize what this encounter means to me.”
“Certainly,” said my uncle, kindly. And being all openness and simplicity himself, he proceeded to relate to our visitor the entire history of our sojourn in Dunberry, and of the events and prospects which had brought us there.