“I can’t imagine.”
“He bought them some damaged bread at one quarter the usual price. It was all mouldy, you know,” said Potts, trying to make Brandon see the joke. “I declare Clark and I roared over it for a couple of months, thinking how surprised they must have been when they sat down to eat their first dinner.”
“That was very neat,” rejoined Brandon.
“They were all sick when they left,” said Potts; “but before they got to Quebec they were sicker, I’ll bet.”
“Why so?”
“Did you ever hear of the ship-fever?” said Potts, in a low voice which sent a sharp trill through every fibre of Brandon’s being. He could only nod his head.
“Well, the Tecumseh, with her six hundred passengers, afforded an uncommon fine field for the ship-fever. That’s what I was going to observe. They had a great time at Quebec last summer; but it was unanimously voted that the Tecumseh was the worst ship of the lot. I send out an agent to see what had become of my three friends, and he came back and told me all. He said that about four hundred of the Tecumseh’s passengers died during the voyage, and ever so many more after the landing. The obtained a list of the dead from the quarantine records, and among them were those of the these three youthful Brandons. Yes, they joined old Cognac pretty soon—lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death not divided. But this young devil that you speak of must have escaped. I dare say he did, for the confusion was awful.”
“But couldn’t there have been another son?”
“Oh no. There was another son, the eldest, the worst of the whole lot, so infernally bad that even old Brandy himself couldn’t stand it, but packed him off to Botany Bay. It’s well he went of his own accord, for if he hadn’t the law would have sent him there at last transported for life.”
“Perhaps this man is the same one.”