"It quite nonplussed me, sir. I thought he was a ghost at first."
"Strange, strange!" mused the elder brother. "In those days, long ago in our childhood, he crossed my path constantly, and here he is again athwart my hawse. By Heaven! but it is strange—wonderful, that fate should have thrown him and Helen Huntington together again, and that neither should know the other; and yet not so very strange, for she was but eight years old when Charles ran away. Yes, he thwarted me then, for even in childhood the girl fancied him above me, and now she affects him even in his fallen fortunes."
"What shall we do, sir, now that master Charles has turned up again?" asked Leonard Hust, in his simplicity. "We cannot testify against him now, sir."
"No, no, no!" said the elder brother, hastily, "he must not be further examined."
"How he has altered, sir, only to think," continued the servant; "why, when he went away from Bramble Park, sir, he wasn't much more than nine years old."
"Yes. I remember, I remember, Leonard," replied his master, hurriedly, while he walked the apartment with quick, irregular steps. "I remember only too well."
This was indeed that elder brother who had, when a boy, so oppressed, so worried, and rendered miserable his brother Charles, as to cause him in a fit of desperation to stray away from home, whither he knew not. His parents saw now—alas! too late—their fatal error; but the boy was gone, no tidings could be had of him, and they believed him dead. The honest tar, whose yarn the attentive reader will remember, as given on the deck of the "Sea Witch," spoke truly of his commander. He had, years before, strayed alongside a vessel, as has been related, from whence he hardly knew himself, or was afraid to say. Hunger and neglect even then had greatly changed him, and he shipped, as has been related. The fall he got at sea threw a cloud over his brain as to past recollections up to that time, and here if the wish ever possessed him as to returning to his early home, he knew naught of it.
When he heard the voice of Leonard Hust in the court, it seemed to strike upon some string in memory's harp, which vibrated to old familiar recollections, and the more he heard him speak the more the sensation came over him which led to the demonstrations which we have already witnessed. And yet he could not recall aught that would serve him as a clue—the early injury to his brain seemed to have obliterated the connecting links that memory could not supply. The reason, probably, why the servant's voice and not the brother's thus recalled him was, that the former had been kind, and his voice had ever sounded like music in the neglected boy's ears, but the brother's voice had never had that charm or happy association connected with it. As to little cousin Helen,—as she was then called,—it was not strange that Miss Huntington, after years of estrangement in India, meeting him under such circumstances, himself so changed, should not have recalled enough of the past to recognize him; and yet we have seen that at times she dwelt upon the tender accents of his voice like sleeping memories, herself quite ignorant of the cause of this peculiar influence.
She was now with her mother on shore at the mission house, in an agony of suspense as to the result of the trial which was taking place. She feared the worst, for Captain Bramble had taken measures to instruct those about her to their effect that the prisoner would be found guilty, and either strung cup by the neck at once, or be sent home to England for the same purpose. Mrs. Huntington felt sad and borne down by the position of affairs—for although she did not understand her daughter's sentiments towards Captain Ratlin, yet she recognized the fact of her and her child's indebtedness to him, and that he had evinced the characteristics of a gentleman.
"Mother, if they find Captain Ratlin guilty, what can they, what will they do with him?" asked Helen Huntington anxiously of her mother, on the day of the trial.