o, it's all true, or Benham wouldn't write me what he has. I've known
him for years. He knows me, too, and he don't go off half-cocked. I
wrote him to look after Bart and sent him some money and give him the
name of the ship, and he watched for her and sent for him all right. I
was pretty nigh crazy that night he left, and handled him, maybe,
rougher'n I ou'ter, but I couldn't help it. There's some things I can't
stand, and what he done was one of 'em. It all comes back to me now,
but I'd do it ag'in." As he spoke the rough, hard sailor leaned forward
and rested his chin on his hand. The news had evidently been a great
shock to him.

The doctor reached over and laid his hand on the captain's knee. "I'm
very, very sorry, captain, for you and for Bart; and the only son you
have, is it not?"

"Yes, and the only child we ever had. That makes it worse. Thank God,
his mother's dead! All this would have broken her heart." For a moment
the two men were silent, then the captain continued in a tone as if he
were talking to himself, his eyes on the lamp:

"But I couldn't have lived with him after that, and I told him so--not
till he acted fair and square, like a man. I hoped he would some day,
but that's over now."

"We're none of us bad all the way through, captain," reasoned the
doctor, "and don't you think of him in that way. He would have come to
himself some day and been a comfort to you. I didn't know him as well
as I might, and only as I met him at Yardley, but he must have had a
great many fine qualities or the Cobdens wouldn't have liked him. Miss
Jane used often to talk to me about him. She always believed in him.
She will be greatly distressed over this news."

"That's what brings me here. I want you to tell her, and not me. I'm
afraid it'll git out and she'll hear it, and then she'll be worse off
than she is now. Maybe it's best to say nothin' 'bout it to nobody and
let it go. There ain't no one but me to grieve for him, and they don't
send no bodies home, not from Rio, nor nowheres along that coast.
Maybe, too, it ain't the time to say it to her. I was up there last
week to see the baby, and she looked thinner and paler than I ever see
her. I didn't know what to do, so I says to myself, 'There's Doctor
John, he's at her house reg'lar and knows the ins and outs of her, and
I'll go and tell him 'bout it and ask his advice.' I'd rather cut my
hand off than hurt her, for if there's an angel on earth she's one. She
s