"Yes," said he, with kindling enthusiasm, "we will go, Fluella. I want to see the good old chief; I want to enjoy the visit I have promised me from my friend Carvil; I want to hear Phillips discourse on woodcraft, and Chanticleer Codman wake the echoes of the lakes by his marvellous crowing. Yes, yes, we will go, and make uncle and mother go with us, this time."
"Uncle and mother!" cried Fluella, laughingly; "how odd that is getting to sound, Suppose I call your mother aunt? Have they not now been married long enough to be both entitled to the more endearing names of father and mother? and are they not happy enough and good enough to merit the dearest names?"
"Yes," answered Elwood, "I will correct the habit, if you really wish it. Yes, yes; the once-styled crusty old bachelor, Arthur Elwood, and my mother, are indeed a happy couple. Did you ever know a happier?"
"Yes, one," replied the hesitating, blushing wife, drawing down her husband's head, and slyly imprinting a kiss on his cheek.
The conversation between the happy pair was here interrupted by the appearance of a boat putting off from the frigate, under the charge of a midshipman; who, having come on board and inquired out Elwood, now approached and presented him a letter, saying, as he departed, it was from the pirate prisoner, and would doubtless require no answer.
The greatly surprised young man tore open the letter, and, in company with his wife, read, with mingled emotions of pain and indignation, the following singular but characteristic compound of malicious vaunt and shameless confession:
"To CLAUD ELWOOD:—My career is ended, at last. Well, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have been nobody's fool nor nobody's tool. Early perceiving that nine out of ten were only the stupid instruments of the tenth man, the world over, I resolved to go into the system, and did, and improved on it so as to make nineteen out of twenty tools to me,—that is all. I have no great fault to find with men generally, though I always despised the whole herd; for I knew that, if they used me well, it was only because they dared not do otherwise. I don't write this, however, to preach upon that, but to let you know another thing, to chew upon.
"You call me a murderer; and I want to tell you that you are the son of a murderer, and therefore stand on a par with my family, even at that. Your father, when we used to operate together in smuggling, being once hard chased, on an out-of-the-way road, by one of the custom-house crew, knocked him down with a club, and finished with the blow, to save a thousand dollars' worth of silk. But I sacredly kept his secret; yes, even to this day, besides making one good fortune for him, and being on the point of making him another. And yet he betrayed and turned against me. Yes, in that affair about the missing peltries, he betrayed me, out and out, and spoilt every thing. That was his unpardonable sin, with me. I resolved he should die for it; and he did. I didn't want to kill you, but couldn't suffer you to become a witness. No, I never had any thing against you, except for allowing matters to take the turn that drove my daughter to anticipate you in breaking off the match. But it was just as well, as it turned out. Avis, in the position of lady abbess of a convent in one of your eastern cities, which it is settled she will have, will stand quite as high, I guess, as in the position of lady Elwood.
"I have done, now, except to ask one favor,—the only one I will ever ask of any man,—and that is, that you won't publish my name, and couple it with the unlucky miss-go of last night; so that my wife and daughter, who know I am in this region, but not my business, may never learn that the captain of the Black Rover and I are one. As my brave boys are all gone down, and as I shall have no trial to bring it out, it rests with you to say whether it is ever to be known or not; for, as I have said, I have no notion of being either tried or hung, any more than I had at the North. GAUT."
On finishing this singular and remorseless missive, with its strange, painful, but as he feared too true disclosure of the secret of that fatal influence which had proved the ruin and final destruction of his father, Claud Elwood was too much troubled and overcome to utter a word of comment; and, with his pained and shuddering wife, he stood mute and thoughtful, until aroused by the stir on board, in preparations for weighing anchor, and the cheering announcement of the captain that a favoring breeze was springing up, and that within twenty minutes they would be, under the fairest of auspices, on their rejoicing way to their own beloved New England.