“Well, I, for one, will not gainsay you. But do not you fear, sometimes that while you are thus stretching a commission—that is the term, I believe, among you liberal gentlemen—you may chance to get your own neck stretched some sultry morning in the Floridas or in Darien.”
“One of the very risks I spoke of but now, Sir Miles,” replied the young man, laughing. “My life were not worth five minutes’ purchase if the Governor of St. Augustine, or of Panama either, for that matter, could once lay hold on me.”
“I marvel,” said the old cavalier, again shaking his head solemnly, “I marvel much—” and then interrupting himself suddenly in the middle of his sentence, he lapsed into a fit of meditative silence.
“At what, if I may be so bold—at what do you so much marvel?”
“That William Allan should consent,” replied the cavalier, “that son of his should embark in so wild and stormy a career, in a career which, I should have judged, with his strict principles and somewhat puritanical feeling, he would deem the reverse of gracious or godfearing.”
“He knows not what career I follow,” answered the young man, bluntly. “But you are in error altogether, sir. I am no son of William Allan.”
“No son of William Allan! Ha! now that I think of it, your features are not his, nor your voice either.”
“Nor my body, nor my soul!” replied the other, hastily and hotly, “no more than the free falcon’s are those of the caged linnet! Sometimes I even marvel how it can be that any drop of mutual or common blood should run in our veins; and yet it is so—and I—I—yet no—I do not repent it!”
“And wherefore should you? there is no worthier or better man, I do believe, than William Allan living; and, in his younger days at least, I know there was no braver.”
“No braver?—indeed! indeed!” exclaimed the young man, eagerly—“was he, indeed, brave?”