Mr. Culter passed a warm eulogium on this heroic devotion, enlarged on the beauty of friendship in general, and concluded by saying he would step over to his hotel, where he had ordered dinner; after which he would certainly drink Mr. M'Grader's health.
“I shall want some details from you,” said M'Grader,—“something written and formal,—to assure my friend that my tidings are trustworthy. I know it will be no easy task to persuade him that he is a man of fortune.”
“You shall have all you require, sir,—a copy of the will, a formal letter from our house, reciting details of the property, and, what will perhaps impart the speediest conviction of all, a letter of credit, in Mr. Butler's favor, for five hundred pounds for immediate use. These are the sort of proofs that no scepticism is strong enough to resist. The only thing that never jests, whose seriousness is above all levity, is money;” and so M'Grader at once acknowledged that when he could go fortified with such testimonies, he defied all doubt.
His preparations for departure were soon made. A short letter to his brother explained the cause of his sudden leaving; a longer one to Dolly told how, in his love for her, he could not do enough for her friend; and that, though he liked Tony well for his own sake, he liked him far more as the “adopted brother and old playfellow of his dearest Dolly.” Poor fellow! he wrote this from a full heart, and a very honest one too. Whether it imparted all the pleasure he hoped it might to her who read it, is none of our province to tell. It is only ours to record that he started that night for Genoa, obtained from a friend—a subordinate in the Government employment—a letter to Garibaldi himself, and sailed with an agent of the General's in charge of a supply of small-arms and ammunition.
They were within thirty miles of Sicily when they were boarded by the Neapolitan corvette the “Veloce,” and carried off prisoners to Palermo,—the one solitary capture the royal navy made in the whole of that eventful struggle.
The proofs that they were Garibaldians were too strong and many for denial; and for a day and a half their fate was far from hopeful. Indeed, had the tidings of the first encounters between the King's forces and the buccaneers been less disastrous than they were, the prisoners would have been shot; but already a half doubt had arisen as to the fidelity of the royal troops. This and that general, it was rumored, had resigned; and of those who remained, it was said, more than one had counselled “concessions.” Ominous word at such a moment, but the presage of something darker and more ominous still.
M'Gruder bore up with a stout heart, and nothing grieved him in all his calamity more than the thought that all this time Tony might be exposing his life as worthless and hopeless, while, if he only knew it, he had already succeeded to what men are content to pass their whole existence to grasp and gain.
Nor was he inactive in his imprisonment He wrote letters to Garibaldi, enclosing others to Tony; he wrote to all the consuls he could think of; to the Minister at Naples, or to his representative; and he proclaimed his right as a “civis Romanus,” and threatened a Palmerstonian vengeance on all and every that had a hand in curtailing his freedom.
In this very natural and British pursuit we must now leave him, and betake ourselves to other cares and other characters.