“How comes it that you are here with so little knowledge of her whereabouts?”
I gave him an account of the last sad year of our life; our meeting in Bristol; our second separation on the high seas; and, last of all, the year I had spent in Maryland. “Thus it was,” I ended, “that I expected to find my sister waiting for me when I got to New York.”
“Ay, take cheer. She is doubtless somewhere near at hand. Last July, you say? I was in Albany then. I have forgotten it; what did you say your surname is?”
“Le Bourse.”
He repeated the name over again half aloud. “I have heard that name somewhere,” he muttered. “Yet I was in Albany this time twelve-month.” He was silent several minutes longer, and then he broke out with, “Where have I heard that name?”
How I hoped he would remember! I durst not speak to him lest I disturb his thoughts. Suddenly he fixed his eye on me and, while he gazed, a look of recognition overspread his features.
“I have heard it,” he said, his eyes opening wider and wider; “and I have seen—can I be mistaken?” He took both my hands in his and I could feel that they were all of a tremble with emotion. “It is you I have seen. Don’t you mind the brook by La Rochelle, and how we cast lots years agone, and how one fell to you and one to my brother? I recall you plain now. I looked back and saw my brother fall. The Lord giveth and He taketh away, blessed be His name. But you stood firm and the rest of us were saved. How many times, my lad, an old man’s prayers have gone up to the Throne that you might be safe.”
We clasped hands in silence; my feelings were too deep for words. The change brought about by the lapse of ten years in even the happiest life is stuff for sorrow. What must I have felt after ten unhappy years of wandering and fight, of sorrow and disappointment, year in and year out? The minister’s voice was the first to break a long silence.
“Let us go to the Earl,” he said, but he was not yet master of his voice.
As we made our way to the fort through crooked narrow streets my companion was at great pains to enlighten me still further in regard to the condition of affairs in the city.