is one of
the ablest lawyers that the colony owns, Richard, and a stanch friend
of yours. He took your case of his own accord. But he says we have no
foothold as yet."

When I asked if there was a will the captain rapped out an oath.

"'Sdeath! yes," he cried, "a will in favour of Grafton and his heirs,
witnessed by Dr. Drake, they say, and another scoundrel. Your name does
not occur throughout the length and breadth of it. You were dead. But
you will have to ask Mr. Swain for those particulars. My dear old friend
was sadly gone when he wrote it, I fear. For he never lacked shrewdness
in his best days. Nor," added Captain Daniel, with force, "nor did he
want for a proper estimation of Grafton."

"He has never been the same since that first sickness," I answered
sadly.

When the captain came to speak of Mr. Carvel's death, the son and
daughter he loved, and the child of his old age in the grave before
him, he proceeded brokenly, and the tears blinded him. Mr. Carvel's last
words will never be known, my dears. They sounded in the unfeeling ears
of the serpent Grafton. 'Twas said that he was seen coming out of his
father's house an hour after the demise, a smile on his face which he
strove to hide with a pucker of sorrow. But by God's grace Mr. Allen had
not read the prayers. The rector was at last removed from Annapolis, and
had obtained the fat living of Frederick which he coveted.

"As I hope for salvation," the captain concluded, "I will swear there is
not such another villain in the world as Grafton. The imagination of a
fiend alone could have conceived and brought to execution the crime he
has committed. And the Borgias were children to him. 'Twas not only the
love of money that urged him, but hatred of you and of your father. That
was his strongest motive, I believe. However, the days are coming, lad,
when he shall have his reward, unless all signs fail. And we have had
enough of sober talk," said he, pressing me to eat. "Faith, but just
now, when you came in, I was thinking of you, Richard. And--God forgive
me! complaining against the lot of my life. And thinking, now that you
were taken out of it, and your father and mother and grandfather gone,
how little I had to live for. Now you are home again," says he, his eyes
lighting on me with affection, "I count the gray hairs as nothing. Let
us have your story, and be merry. Nay, I might have guessed you had been
in London, with your fine clothes and your English