lling the public that."

He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto kept
to myself: the condition of the dead mate's fingers: the cries that the
sight of them had recalled.

"That Portuguese villain again!" cried my companion, fairly leaping from
the chair which I had left and he had taken. "It was the work of the
same cane that killed the steward. Don't tell me an Englishman would
have done it; and yet you said nothing about that either!"

It was my first glimpse of this side of my young host's character. Nor
did I admire him the less, in his spirited indignation, because much of
this was clearly against myself. His eyes flashed. His face was white. I
suddenly found myself the cooler man of the two.

"My dear fellow, do consider!" said I. "What possible end could have
been served by my stating what I couldn't prove against a man who
could never be brought to book in this world? Santos was punished as he
deserved; his punishment was death, and there's an end on't."

"You might be right," said Rattray, "but it makes my blood boil to hear
such a story. Forgive me if I have spoken strongly;" and he paced his
hall for a little in an agitation which made me like him better and
better. "The cold-blooded villain!" he kept muttering; "the infernal,
foreign, blood-thirsty rascal! Perhaps you were right; it couldn't have
done any good, I know; but--I only wish he'd lived for us to hang him,
Cole! Why, a beast like that is capable of anything: I wonder if
you've told me the worst even now?" And he stood before me, with candid
suspicion in his fine, frank eyes.

"What makes you say that?" said I, rather nettled.

"I shan't tell you if it's going to rile you, old fellow," was his reply.
And with it reappeared the charming youth whom I found it impossible
to resist. "Heaven knows you have had enough to worry you!" he added, in
his kindly, sympathetic voice.

"So much," said I, "that you cannot add to it, my dear Rattray. Now,
then! Why do you think there was something worse?"

"You hinted as much in town: rightly or wrongly I gathered there was
something you would never speak about to living man."

I turned from him with a groan.

"Ah! but that had nothing to do with Santos."

"Are you sure?" he cried.

"No," I murmured; "it had something to do with him, in a sense; but
don't ask me any more." And I leaned my forehead on the high oak
mantel-piece, and groaned again.

His hand was upon my shoul