"Helmar?"
"Hush, now! don't get that maggot agait again. My mother'd ban us both, should her ears side this way."
"What is it you mean, Margray dear?"
"Sure you've heard of Helmar, child?"
Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our Provincial lips. A man—this Helmar of to-day—about whom more strange tales were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself. That the walls of his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known. That the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those who had seen his seraglio;—but few, indeed, had seen him,—a lonely man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted by the curse of his birth.
"Oh, yes," I said, "of Helmar away down the bay; but the mate of our brig was named Helmar, too."
Margray's ivory stiletto punched a red eyelet in her finger.
"Oh, belike it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, they say."
"What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?"
"What had he to do with her?" answered Margray in under-voice. "He fell in love with her!"