“Proof! Am I fool or trickster, Mr. Craike?”
“I do not think you fool or trickster, Bradbury.”
“Look on this boy: his likeness to your son Richard. Knowing your son Charles, think at what he would stay to keep him from your sight.”
He said deliberately, “I know my son Charles even as I know myself. I am no censor, Bradbury. Charles would have kept this lad away from me, say you? Fearing lest he commend himself to me and profit by it; take more at my death than by the law he must inherit. Money and jewels—knowing on what I have my hand. What of it, Bradbury? Had I been Charles; had I desired to keep my brother’s son out of my father’s sight—for such a reason—I would have done as Charles has done. Only, I was bolder in my day than Charles. Enough, what is all this to me?”
“Yet Charles has failed,” said Mr. Bradbury, grinning, “and you will profit by it, Mr. Craike. Do you love Charles?”
“You need not ask that, Bradbury.”
“And you loved Richard. You should favour Richard’s son. Alone—I said of you—alone, with thoughts—and terrors.”
“Had the sea ever terror for me, Bradbury, or peril, or the dark? What terrors now?”
“Mr. Craike, you are a man, and the unknown after death is terrible to men. Except they have a faith that you have not. Unhappily!”
“I have no faith, or fear.”