my family, and it has been the guardian of our hope and
honor. Receive it, friend of my heart, and be the protector of the young
girl who yielded up to you her very soul!'"

The doctor started as if he had been stung by a scorpion; but Captain
Brand, heedless or inattentive to the movement, went on:

"Yes, _caballeros_, those were her very words; murmured, too, in her low
contralto tones with a pure, lisping Castilian accent, as she laid her
stately head on my shoulder.

"Ay, those were rapturous moments; and it was in some degree--yes, I may
say in truth--entirely her own fault that they did not last.

"Well, for some days--eight or ten, perhaps--with light baffling winds,
we crept stealthily along the south side of St. Domingo; but the weather
was delightful, and the time passed on the wings of a zephyr. In the
warm, soft evenings, with the moon or stars shedding their pearly gleams
over the sea, she sat beside me on the deck of the schooner, watching
with girlish interest the white sails above her head, or singing to me
the sweet little sequidillas of her native land. And again, starting up
from my arms, she would peep over the counter, trace the foam as it
flashed and bubbled in our wake, or point to the track of a dolphin as
he leaped above the luminous waves and went like a bullet to windward.

"I flatter myself, _caballeros_, that there have been periods in my
career on the high seas, or on land, and may be again, for aught I
know," continued the elegant pirate, as he crossed his legs and threw
back the lappels of his velvet coat, so as to expose the magnificence of
his waistcoat, and the frills on his broad, muscular chest, "when men of
high birth and breeding, and lovely women too of noble lineage, have not
thought it beneath them to dine with or to receive the homage
of--a--Captain Brand.

"And, _por Dios_!"--the narrator did not consider it unbecoming his
cloth and profession to swear in a foreign language--"_por Dios!_
_senores_, I have known the time, too, when I have played whist with a
French prince of the blood and two knights of the Golden Fleece."

"And you fleeced them? No?" muttered Don Ignacio, with an envious
glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to rob the
community but himself.

"And not only that," continued the captain, rapidly, "but the daughter
of an English peer of the realm once proposed to run away with me. Ho!
ho! yes, she actually proposed to elope with me; but a