The seaman took a miniature from his vest, and handed it to him. It contained two portraits—one of a captain in the British navy, in full uniform, his head bare, and locks of fair hair falling even over his shoulders, for he had disdained the peruke then in fashion—and that of a lady, whose dark eyes and raven ringlets told that her nativity had been the sunny south.
'Johnson is not unlike the portrait of my father, and is a slim man,' said Edward. 'He will readily go with me. I will personate my mother. I am confident the papers are not destroyed, for I have often seen him when he little dreamed an eye was upon him, examining some papers he keeps in a small casket on his toilet, and one in particular, a document of some length, which he has often seemed to me about to tear, but always replaced.'
'It will do,' said his grandfather. 'Good Mrs. Ally will procure you the necessary attire. She can be trusted fully, and I will reconcile her and Johnson, so that we can all work in concert. Those papers secured, with the evidence of Violetta and the dying deposition of your nurse, with the evidence of the lady who took charge of your mother, and who is also alive and in London, I doubt not soon to see you in the enjoyment of your rights. It will be a strange anomaly—an American a British peer.'
'And then, dear grandfather, you will allow me to repay you, in a small measure, by my affection and care of your declining years, for all the anxiety you have endured in securing my interests.'
'Not to me, young man, not to me. My lot on earth is cast. I am here a fugitive, in danger of a felon's doom. I shall return to honest, plain America, and there devote the remainder of my life to succoring the poor and afflicted. Do you likewise here, remembering that you are but the steward of your wealth. Let the former oppressions of your house be forgotten in your good deeds. Let your voice be heard in the high court of which you will be a member, whenever the artizan and the laborer need a defender from the foul enactments that are there consummated. Let your passions be subjected to the control of religion and morality—let no avaricious knave oppress the hard-toiling farmer in your name, but see to these things yourself. Let your ear be easy of access, and your heart be open, and then, my Lord, I shall be more than repaid, you will have had a nobler vengeance than any man could give you, and will earn in truth a right to bear the proud motto which your fathers arrogated to themselves, emblazoned, not on your escutcheon, but in the hearts of grateful men—
"Second to none in deeds of charity."'
CHAPTER VIII.
THE END OF TWO VICTIMS.
Walter Waters, or Captain Williams, as he called himself now, and in fact He had come to England ostensibly as the commander of a trading vessel, had determined to effect the escape of Horace Hunter. That his own plans might not be disarranged by any violence towards the Earl, he had on an accidental meeting in the West Indies promised Hunter a more full revenge if he waited for three years; and feeling that his capture had in some measure been owing to his appointment, he revolved in his mind many plans for his rescue. His trial had taken place, and as the evidence was conclusive, he was condemned to death. As his friends were now permitted to see him, Walter with his daughter to whom and his father he had made himself known in private, although he still stopped at Mrs. Ally's when not in London, obtained permission to visit the doomed man. Who shall attempt to portray the feelings of Mary Waters, as in company with the parent so long mourned as dead, she set forth to hold the last communication on earth with him to whom the treasure of her young love had been given. Joy at once more beholding her father mingled in painful intensity with her heart's desolation when she contemplated the fearful position of her lover; and to her father's assurances of rescuing him, of reclaiming him and of their union and a happy life in America, she only replied by a mournful feature, and pointing to her own emaciated form and hectic cheek. Her beauty had now assumed an almost unearthly character. The lustre of her dark blue eye and deathly paleness of her cheek told indeed her race was nearly run. As they all stood together in the steward's house on the morning of their visit, they formed a strange and touching group. The bowed figure of the aged man whose life had been prolonged so far beyond the usual term of man's existence, the strong form of the mariner, whose vigor was unabated although near sixty, and the wasted figure and sharpened features of his daughter, who though scarce more than past the threshold of womanhood, was yet closer to the dread abyss of eternity than either. The old steward looked wistfully after them as they passed out into the wintry air.