"My brother, my child!" exclaimed Mary, "how happy our father would be if he could hear you! How much you resemble him, dear Robert! When you are a man you will be quite like him!"
"God grant it, Mary!" said Robert, glowing with holy and filial pride.
"But how shall we pay our debt to Lord and Lady Glenarvan?" continued Mary.
"Oh, that will not be difficult," answered Robert, with his boyish impulsiveness. "We will tell them how much we love and respect them, and we will show it to them by our actions."
"That is all we can do!" added the young girl, covering her brother's face with kisses; "and all that they will like, too!"
Then, relapsing into reveries, the two children of the captain gazed silently into the shadowy obscurity of the night. However, in fancy they still conversed, questioned, and answered each other. The sea rocked the ship in silence, and the phosphorescent waters glistened in the darkness.
But now a strange, a seemingly supernatural event took place. The brother and sister, by one of those magnetic attractions that mysteriously draw the souls of friends together, experienced at the same instant the same curious hallucination.
"METHOUGHT, THE BILLOWS SPOKE!"
From the midst of these alternately brightening and darkening waves, they thought they heard a voice issue, whose depth of sadness stirred every fibre of their hearts.
"Help! help!" cried the voice.