Thus Brandon, with a strong flush and very earnestly. Morgan Leroux considered him for a moment.
“You say I know him,” she answered, slowly. “I doubt if I do, though I’ve lived in his house for several years. All I can tell you is, he is just and kind to me, and he has the name of a just man. What he thinks right, that he does, and nothing stops him.”
“There it is!” said Brandon, eagerly—“what he thinks right! The question is, what does he think right? You see, we’re new to this buccaneering business—it seems to have laws of its own, quite different from the Ten Commandments. We haven’t quite got the drift of the thing.”
Morgan looked at him with real concern in her vivid face.
“Do you know, Mr Pomfrett,” said she, gravely, “I think both you and I must take our chance. And for your business, I can tell you that it is of no use appealing to the Governor,” she added, significantly.
This, chiming with our own desires, clinched the matter.
“It seems,” said Brandon, as soon as we were alone, “that we are appointed to serve as pirates’ catspaws. Well, we’ll see which will pull the most from the fire, the thieves or the honest men.”
“Did you never feel,” I asked him, “when we started the business with Dawkins, that there was something behind—that it came too easy to be natural?”
“No,” said Brandon. “Did you?”
I told him that I did; and, what was more, that I had the same feeling at that moment. I told him Murch was too prodigal of his assurances of plain dealing; that, so far as my experience served, honest men did not indulge in these protestations; that I believed them (as I do still) to be the infallible mark of insincerity.