“I know, sir, what you say is true,” observed Paul, glancing at the stranger. “I remember your coming to Stanmore that sad night, when Miss Lucy was taken ill, and I was close by when Captain Everard and you were speaking together. Are you not Captain Rochard?”
“You are right, my friend,” said the stranger. “By that name Captain Everard knew me. Necessity, and not my will, compels me to associate with these people,” he continued; “not for the sake of making money, but for another motive, believe me. You do not suppose that your father would allow me his friendship did he believe that I was the leader of a band of outlaws. I may some day tell you my motives of associating with these men. To your father I owe my life, and that alone would make me take an interest in you, young lady; but I may also tell you that I have another reason. We are related, although not very nearly. Your father’s mother was a relation of my father. I never saw her, for she died when I was very young; indeed, I am but a few years older than your father.”
“You related to us? You know then the facts of the marriage of my grandfather to my grandmother. How little did I expect to hear this. You may be of the very greatest assistance to us.”
Captain Rochard assured Mabel that it would be a great satisfaction to him to be so. She then told him of the loss of the certificate, and the successful scheme which their relative Mr Sleech had set up for obtaining possession of the property.
“For my own sake,” she observed, “I care little for what has occurred; but it will be a bitter thing for my father when he returns to find that he has been deprived of the property he thought his own.”
Captain Rochard was silent for some minutes; then turning to Paul, he asked suddenly—
“Do you know in what year the colonel’s brother married?”
“Yes, sir, I mind it well; it was the beginning of the war with France, and much about the time that Frederick of Prussia opened his seven years’ war, and Admiral Byng did not beat the French in the first action, and was shot in consequence. A difficult job Lieutenant Everard had, too, to bring home his young baby, and escape the French cruisers. I mind his coming home as well as if it had been yesterday, and Madam Everard taking care of the little motherless boy, that’s the captain now—this young lady’s father—as if he had been her own child, and the poor lieutenant going to sea, and getting shot the next year. He died as a brave officer might wish to die, on the deck of his ship, lashing the enemy’s bowsprit to his own mainmast, that she might not get away—”
“But I forget dates; in what year was that?” asked Captain Rochard, interrupting the old man, who might otherwise have run on to a much further length in his recollections.
“That was in the year ’56 or ’57 to the best of my mind,” answered Paul. “The captain’s a little above forty, and it’s about that time ago.”