"Seek your subject," responded Hamilton.
"You see that lady there?" continued the West Indian. "She has a boy with her."
"I do."
"The mother of the boy, or not?" continued Dewhurst. "I say she is; and, in place of fifty, I'll make it a hundred."
"Have you ever seen them before?" asked Hamilton, trying to be calm.
"Never. I know no more of them than you do; and, besides, I give you your choice of mother, or not mother."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Campbell, as he looked intently at Dewhurst. "Are you mad, Dewhurst? Has your last triumph blinded you? The woman is too old by ten years."
Hamilton turned round without saying a word, and drew cautiously near the lady, whose eyes, as she stood looking at a foreign ship coming in, were still scornful, and it seemed as if she waited until some gentleman came up to inform him of the cruel act she had so recently witnessed. Resisting her fiery glances, he surveyed her calmly, looking by turns at her and the boy. A slight smile played on his lip in the midst of the indications of his wrath. One might have read in that expression—
"Not a feature in these two faces in the least similar, and the age is beyond all mortal doubt. I have the gull-flayer on the hip at last."
And returning to the companions with the same simulated coolness—