The fact that the Bible (for so it was) happened to be upside down in his hands somewhat staggered my faith in the repentance of Daniel Risk, who, I remembered, had never numbered reading among his arts.
I addressed him as Captain.
“I am no Captain,” said he in a whine, “but plain Dan Risk, the blackest sinner under the cope and canopy of heaven.” And he applied himself to his volume as before.
“Do you know me?” I asked, and he must have found the voice familiar, for he rose from his stool, approached the bars of his cage, and examined me. “Andy Greigs nephew!” he cried. “It's you; I hope you're a guid man?”
“I might be the best of men—and that's a dead one—so far as you are concerned,” I replied, stung a little by the impertinence of him.
“The hand of Providence saved me that last item in my bloody list o' crimes,” said he, with a singular mixture of the whine for his sins and of pride in their number. “Your life was spared, I mak' nae doubt, that ye micht repent o' your past, and I'm sorry to see ye in sic fallals o' dress, betokenin' a licht mind and a surrender to the vanities.”
My dress was scantily different from what it had been on the Seven Sisters, except for some lace, my tied hair, and a sword.
“Indeed, and I am in anything but a light frame of mind, Captain Risk,” I said. “There are reasons for that, apart from seeing you in this condition which I honestly deplore in spite of all the wrong you did me.”
“I thank God that has been forgiven me,” he said, with a hypocritical cock of his hale eye. “I was lost in sin, a child o' the deevil, but noo I am made clean,” and much more of the same sort that it is unnecessary herp to repeat.
“You can count on my forgiveness, so far as that goes,” I said, disgusted with his manner.