Sacred to the Memory of
HECTOR CARON,
Ensign in the French Navy.
Erected by his friend, Galt Roscoe,
H.B.M.N.
Beneath this was the simple line:
"Why, what evil hath he done?"
"He was your brother?" I asked.
"Yes, monsieur, my one brother." Her tears dropped slowly.
"And Galt Roscoe, who was he?" asked I.
Through her grief her face was eloquent. "I never saw him—never knew him," she said. "He saved my poor Hector from much suffering; he nursed him, and buried him here when he died, and then—that!" pointing to the tombstone. "He made me love the English," she said. "Some day I shall find him, and I shall have money to pay him back all he spent—all." Now I guessed the meaning of the scene on board the 'Fulvia', when she had been so anxious to preserve her present relations with Mrs. Falchion. This was the secret—a beautiful one. She rose. "They disgraced Hector in New Caledonia," she said, "because he refused to punish a convict at Ile Nou who did not deserve it. He determined to go to France to represent his case. He left me behind, because we were poor. He went to Sydney. There he came to know this good man,"—her finger gently felt his name upon the stone,—"who made him a guest upon his ship; and so he came on towards England. In the Indian Ocean he was taken ill: and this was the end."
She mournfully sank again beside the grave, but she was no longer weeping.
"What was this officer's vessel?" I said presently. She drew from her dress a letter. "It is here. Please read it all. He wrote that to me when Hector died."