“Wait till I get my ducats back!” Wolfang consoled himself with muttering under his breath on such occasions, champing his jaws and keeping his fingers stalwortly from his dagger-hilt.
The pair were standing over the body of the maître-de-camp, Carlo with the papers in his hand taken from the breast of the dead lieutenant’s doublet, when Hilo cried:
“Hark! the camp is in motion yonder above. Come, Wolf, stir your clumsy legs before we are missed.”
And Wolfang trotting after his master thrust the crumpled missives into his own doublet—“It’s no use to throw away any thing in the dark,” he said; “I did a note of hand once so, and somebody else got the good of it; one of these days I’ll find time to spell it out”—where they remained many days, now and then taken out and returned, without much progress made in their elucidation, for the warlike captain was not much of a scholar, and found opportunity for only cursory examinations.
A destination very different was the captain’s pocket, it may be remarked, from that designed by the writer, Don Pedro, who, about the time Carlo pocketed the letters, was conversing with Señor Inique as to their efficiency in De Haye’s hands.
No man is absolutely penitent at the start; some fear for character, personal safety, or the like, is the prime mover, after which—it may be moments or years after—enters in a godly sorrow for sin committed. Sift your motives, exemplary reader, and satisfy yourself for once, your conscience is not the tender prompter to your most virtuous deeds you imagine: something to the effect, what it, or the world, or the church, or your wife at home will think, has its due influence. Human nature is not to be taken to task on this account; we are all more selfish than we choose to admit even to ourselves, or there would be an end straightway of all murders, thefts and villanies great and small and of every kind; and there is so little native good in us it is best not to cavil at the source of any redeeming trait, whatever it may be.
So Don Augustino after ten years’ penitence of fear, made confession for the first time of the same; not with the best conclusion or purpose in view, it may be objected, but the honest knight’s expressions of opinion were scarcely adapted to producing a better feeling at the beginning. Sir Pedro thought as much himself when he reviewed the conversation, and his after arguments were such as the mild expression of his fine gray eyes lent effect to, a thing they very seldom did when his speech was pointed with sarcasm. The soldier was first molified, then thoroughly subdued, and in the end inclined to adopt the counsel of his ancient companion-in-arms, who now, as always, took the shortest available course to the doing away of a bad deed by substitution of a good. Not that all this ripening of virtue in the veteran sinner’s breast was much hastened by the knight’s eloquence; it was mainly by the inexplicably swift thaw after the ice has been broken through with throes of dissolution, and something the knight’s words may have done at the beginning to aid the breaking up, something at the end to temper the freshet. What he saw when he entered the inner cabin of Inique’s ship, of that blank face and imbecility, I have nothing to relate; let the door remain shut upon him as it was in Inique’s time, and all likeness and constraint of the unhappy inmate be left to the imagination.
Entire restitution of name and property on one side, and public avowal of his paternity on the other, was what the straight-forward adviser urged, and Inique consented ultimately to perform. Avowed penitence strangely humbled the misshapen pride of the man. Once he said:
“You were right, Padilh; I was a coward from first to last. I begin to perceive there are two sorts of courage, one infinitely superior to the other, and God alone knows how much braver than I this poor boy might have proved.”
The main obstacle now to be overcome was the will of the supposititious Hilo, whose rage at finding himself heir to nothing would be likely to exceed all bounds.