“What!” he cried, “Nelson Harcliffe has sent me his own nephew, the son of my dear old friend? This is, indeed, a rare expression of loyalty!”
“I thought you knew,” I rejoined, rather embarrassed, for the fathomless eyes were reading me with singular eagerness.
“I only knew that Nelson Harcliffe would respond promptly to my requests. I knew that the Castina would bring my secretary to Brazil. But whom he might be I could not even guess.” He paused a moment, to continue in a graver tone: “I am greatly pleased. I need a friend—a faithful assistant.”
“I hope I may prove to be both, sir,” I returned, earnestly. “But you seem not to lack loyal friends. On my way hither from Rio de Janiero I have been protected more than once, doubtless by your orders.”
“Yes; the cause has many true adherents, and I notified our people to expect an American gentleman on the Castina and to forward him to me in safety. They know, therefore, that you came to assist the Revolution, and it would have been strange, indeed, had the royalists been able to interfere with you.”
“Your party is more powerful than I had suspected,” I remarked, thinking of my several narrow escapes from arrest.
“We are only powerful because the enemy is weak,” answered Dom Miguel, with a sigh. “Neither side is ready for combat, or even an open rupture. It is now the time of intrigue, of plot and counterplot, of petty conspiracies and deceits. These would discourage any honest heart were not the great Cause behind it all—were not the struggle for freedom and our native land! But come; you are weary. Let me show you to your room, Robert Harcliffe.”
He dwelt upon the name with seeming tenderness, and I began to understand why my father and my stern Uncle Nelson had both learned to love this kindly natured gentleman of Brazil.
He led me through cool and spacious passages to a cozy room on the ground floor, which, he told me, connected by a door with his study or work-room.
“I fear my trunks have been seized by the government,” said I, and then related to him the details of my arrest and the assassination of the police lieutenant.