"Don't—don't tell them who he is! Promise me you won't tell them anything! Say it's a stranger! You are not sure it's he—I heard you say so!"
"Not say it's my own son! Why?" He was entirely unconscious of what was in her mind.
Jane had risen to her feet at the note of agony in Lucy's voice and had stepped to her side as if to protect her. The doctor stood listening in amazement to Lucy's outbreak. He knew her reasons, and was appalled at her rashness.
"No! Don't—DON'T!" Lucy was looking up into the captain's face now, all her terror in her eyes.
"Why, I can't see what good that'll do!" For the moment he thought that the excitement had turned her head. "Isaac Polhemus'll know him," he continued, "soon's he sets his eyes on him. And even if I was mean enough to do it, which I ain't, these letters would tell. They've got to go to the Superintendent 'long with everything else found on bodies. Your name's on some o' 'em and mine's on some others. We'll git 'em ag'in, but not till Gov'ment see 'em."
These were the letters which had haunted her!
"Give them to me! They're mine!" she cried, seizing the captain's fingers and trying to twist the letters from his grasp.
A frown gathered on the captain's brow and his voice had an ugly ring in it:
"But I tell ye the Superintendent's got to have 'em for a while. That's regulations, and that's what we carry out. They ain't goin' to be lost—you'll git 'em ag'in."
"He sha'n't have them, I tell you!" Her voice rang now with something of her old imperious tone. "Nobody shall have them. They're mine—not yours—nor his. Give them—"