“My gosh! it was so quick that I scase got a sight of him, Mr. Harrington,” returned Tugmutton, staring into the white face of his questioner. “I on’y saw he had on a straw hat an’ a sorter light coat, an’ was tanned consid’ble.”
“Tanned,” mused Harrington. “That must have been the captain of the Soliman.”
He was right in his conviction. It was Bangham.
“I see how it was done,” he pursued. “They were together, and came on Antony and Charles standing there. One hailed the carriage—probably some passing hack—the other decoyed the boy away to prevent his outcries—and the rest we know. O Boston, Boston! I loved you once—every stone in your pavement was dear to me; but I sicken of you now, and I shall never walk your streets with joy again! A poor, helpless, harmless man—a fugitive from the worst tyranny that deforms the world—and in the streets of this free city, in open daylight, on the Sabbath, with a crowd standing around, he can be stolen, as a horse could not be stolen, and not one person lifts a hand to prevent it, or asks why! Not one—not one!”
He covered his burning eyes with his hand, and sat still. The doleful boy gazed piteously at the pale, mute faces of the two ladies, his fat, ashen visage quivering with the feeling that he had done a mischief which not even Harrington could undo.
“John.” It was Mrs. Eastman that spoke. “You have not asked who the man was that decoyed Charles.”
He looked with mortal sadness into her agitated face.
“Need I ask, mother?” he drearily replied. “A gentleman. It was not Lafitte, for him Charles knows. There is but one other person that wears the attire of a gentleman who could be a party to this deed.”
The tears flowed on her face, and as they flowed she wiped them away.
“You are right,” she faltered. “It is the last, the worst disgrace I can ever know. A brother of my own blood, the son of the mother that bore me—and with his own hands, not preserving even the miserable decorum of an agent, with his own hands he commits this crime. It almost kills me to think of it.”