"There," said I, "is the grave of your pretty friend Mauresco."
"You should thank him at least for dropping the ring," said the Smith in answer. "I can understand why the Papaloi did not want him back again. He, in that case, would have no more claim on the Pythoness."
And now we started to rise the hill. We had come quickly, walking on the wet sand just where it was hard set, and so escaping the brambles and rough gravel of the nearer shore.
As we struggled up the steep ascent, my heart began to glow in my bosom at the thought of meeting Cynthia. How would she meet me? Would she notice me at all? She would have the little boy whom Zalee had rescued. That would be a new interest for her. Well, God bless her, poor soul! Let her have any interest now and ever that would make her one tithe the happier. We were halfway up the slope. I stopped and turned to the Smith.
"There is something further that I must tell you," I said, "to prevent misunderstandings. The lady whom you will see here is my wedded wife. We were married by the Captain of the Yankee Blade, by virtue of his position as Captain, and on the deck of his ship on the high seas. For the present we are agreed not to consider ourselves as man and wife, except in name. But I want you to know this, and to know that whosoever harms or injures my wife in any way must reckon with me."
"Bless your soul!" said the Smith, "I have a good wife of my own in Cornwall. She is the keeper of the house of the Lady Trevelyan. I can not say that I have never looked at other women, or that other women have not looked at me. But I have never wronged my good wife in deed, thank God! I could not hope in any case, were it ever so, that a lady of the standing of your wife would do more than look at one in my station."
"Stop there!" said I. "I did not dream of such a thing, but I want it understood that this lady must be treated with all respect, the more because of her unfortunate condition, and that no word shall be spoken which shall offend her dignity."
"She will get no such word from me," replied the Smith. "Thank the Lord, I know a lady when I see one."
The Smith's Cornish dialect was, I suppose, excellent. As I am an American, thank God! I can not pretend to say as to that. I can not speak the brogue, nor can I write it down, so that the Smith's speech must go for as good as mine. There were many words that I did not know. I have heard that the English say of us that we in America speak the language of Shakespeare and the Bible. I know little of the former, which, God forgive me, I placed before the Holy Book, but if we do speak the language of that book, what better can they ask of us? I have sometimes wondered if any one has ever considered what an excellent thing it has been for our country that our Pilgrim Fathers did not hail from Yorkshire, or from any counties but those where the purest English was spoken. Imagine all America speaking like my friend the Smith! Thankful also should we be that these forefathers of ours had not remained so long in Holland as to obliterate their good old English tongue. And let me say just here, Adoniah, that no matter what misunderstandings we have had with the mother country in the days just passed, and no matter how misunderstood we are of them at the day in which I write, I see a coming time when all differences will be forgotten and when English-speaking people shall rule the globe. I have a way of digressing, son Adoniah. You must pardon it.
I asked the Smith as we came along why we had seen no natives if there were so many in the neighbourhood.