aid Margray, bending forward at the pictures
shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at
what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a
yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my
mother means,--I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay
there! She's white and fine, I'll warrant; see her move like a swan on
the waters! Ay, she's a lovesome lass,--and Helmar thought so, too."

"What are you saying of Mary Strathsay? Who _don't_ think she's a
lovesome lass?"

"Helmar don't _now_,--I'll dare be sworn."

"Helmar?"

"Hush, now! don't get that maggot agait again. My mother'd ban us both,
should her ears side this way."

"What is it you mean, Margray dear?"

"Sure you've heard of Helmar, child?"

Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came
northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian
seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our
Provincial lips. A man--this Helmar of to-day--about whom more strange
tales were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself. That the walls of
his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of
years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known. That
the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were
fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and
noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon,
blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those
who had seen his seraglio;--but few, indeed, had seen him,--a lonely
man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted
by the curse of his birth.

"Oh, yes," I said, "of Helmar away down the bay; but the mate of our
brig was named Helmar, too."

Margray's ivory stiletto punched a red eyelet in her finger.

"Oh, belike it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to
drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, they say."

"What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?"

"What had he to do with her?" answered Margray in under-voice. "He fell
in love with her!"

"That's not so strange."

"Then I'll tell you what's stranger, and open your eyes a wee. She fell
in love with him."

"Our Mary? Then why didn't she marry him?"

"Marry Helmar?"

"Yes. If my mother wants gold, there it is for her."

"He's the child of pirates; there's bl