this he was doubtless very
justly condemned, but who was there to praise him when he had, at the
risk of his life and in the face of the authorities, carried a cargo
of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa Bay to the
Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In this
notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase, the
British frigate _Ceres_, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite
of the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.

In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble.
The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared in
either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the
severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and
cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and
innocent surroundings, the old brick house looking down upon them, the
odor of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the
more incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and
on with hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west
and the day began to decline.

That evening Mainwaring stayed to tea and when he parted from Lucinda
Fairbanks it was after nightfall, with a clear, round moon shining in
the milky sky and a radiance pallid and unreal enveloping the old
house, the blooming apple trees, the sloping lawn and the shining
river beyond. He implored his sweetheart to let him tell her uncle and
aunt of their acknowledged love and to ask the old man's consent to
it, but she would not permit him to do so. They were so happy as they
were. Who knew but what her uncle might forbid their fondness? Would
he not wait a little longer? Maybe it would all come right after a
while. She was so fond, so tender, so tearful at the nearness of their
parting that he had not the heart to insist. At the same time it was
with a feeling almost of despair that he realized that he must now be
gone--maybe for the space of two years--without in all that time
possessing the right to call her his before the world.

When he bade farewell to the older people it was with a choking
feeling of bitter disappointment. He yet felt the pressure of her
cheek against his shoulder, the touch of soft and velvet lips to his
own. But what were such clandestin