"I have been away three years, as I promised you."
"Well, what do you want?"
"Money."
"Have I ever seen you when you did not?"
"No, Flint, you never did. But you saw me once when I had an unstained soul—when I could have looked up to Heaven and said, 'I am poor, Father, but I am honest.' Have you enough money to pay for a lost soul? Oh Flint, I am a wrecked man! If it had only been murder—if I had killed a man in the heat of passion—but a poor innocent babe in the cold snow! The child! the little babe! Ah, Flint, I never see the white snow coming down but I think of it. Those eyes are always with me. They follow me out to sea. They haunt me in the long watches. One night, when a storm had torn our rigging to tatters, and we heard the breakers on the lee-shore, I saw her standing by the binnacle light, and, so help me Heaven! she had grown to be a woman. I fainted at the wheel. You heard of the shipwreck. How could a ship keep clear of the rocks and the helmsman in a trance? Forty souls went down, down! Hist! who said that? Not I. No, not I! I am a maniac!"
"Don't go on that way," pleaded Flint, giving uneasy looks toward the door, which he regretted having locked.
"Why?"
"It is not pleasant."
"What isn't?"
"Your eyes—your words. What can I do for you?"