EVENGE! There is something truculent in the very sound of it. But Ewald Nordahl's revenge was not intended to be truculent. It was to be rather in the nature of glowing coals heaped upon the appropriate party's head, or something of that sort. It was to be proof positive that Ewald Nordahl was a greater man than anybody in the benighted town of his birth had suspected—particularly than his father, Captain P. T. Nordahl, of The North Star, had suspected. If Ewald could have made a triumphal entry into the town at the head of a conquering host, sentenced his father (and some others whom he owed grudges) to death, and then magnanimously pardoned them, he would have been satisfied. But as he saw no way of accomplishing anything so magnificent, he had to choose the next best thing, which was to land incognito, cut a superb figure in the eyes of the natives, spend money with splendid heedlessness, and at last, when he had set the whole town agog, dramatically unmask. Though he was not aware of it, it was from the Bible he had borrowed this innocent plot. The incident in the story of Joseph where, as governor of Egypt, he says to the frightened Israelites, "I am your brother Joseph," had always thrilled him.
During long years of hardship and toil, Ewald Nordahl had hugged this revenge to his bosom; and though he had a suspicion that it was a trifle boyish, and "dime-novelish," he had grown so fond of it that he could not persuade himself to give it up. The terrible wrong rankled yet in his breast; and even now, after the lapse of fifteen years, he often caught himself groaning at the thought of it. What made it doubly hard to bear, was the fact that he had been, nay, was yet, sincerely fond of his father. That he was the son of the brave captain who had received no end of medallions from foreign governments for saving ships and crews with peril to his own, and performed no end of brave deeds on the high seas, had been his pride and delight. He had looked up to him with all the enthusiasm of boyish hero-worship. There had been a devoted comradeship between them, and each had been the other's heartiest admirer. And now to be wronged and cruelly humiliated by this very object of his most ardent admiration—it was more than the stanchest heart could endure. Ewald felt at first annihilated, and would have remained annihilated, if the desire for revenge had not rekindled his ambition.
To make a long story short, the circumstances were about as follows: Captain Nordahl, after having been a widower for five or six years, took unto himself a new wife. He was then a man in his best years, and, moreover, well-to-do, so there was no reason in the world why he should not marry. His second wife was young and pretty, and she bore him, in rapid succession, half a dozen daughters. Somehow she had not been in the house for a month before Ewald had managed to get on a war footing with her; and his whole boyhood from his eleventh year had been passed in the practice of more or less active hostilities. He could not, by any stretch of charity, be called a good boy; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that his stepmother did not love him. When her husband was at sea, she left Ewald to his own devices, making no pretence of controlling him. But when the captain, during two or three months of the year, made the house resound with his Boreas voice, she invited, by her spasms of educational zeal, perpetual conflicts. She filled his ears with tales of his son's depravity; and when he, in his easy-going way, replied, "Well, mother, don't be too hard on him. I was a tough case myself when I was a boy but I have turned out a pretty decent sort of man after all. Let him work off his spirits in mischief; then he will be rid of them," it soon became evident to Mrs. Nordahl that her husband had a tender spot in his heart for his only son; while all the little girls with which she had enriched him came in for a much smaller share of his attention. And it was this vicarious jealousy on her children's behalf which made her resolve, by fair means or foul, to get the boy out of the house. It happened that twenty-five dollars had disappeared from the captain's desk, and she had no hesitation in accusing Ewald of the theft. She would not have done it, perhaps, if she could have foreseen the effect upon her husband. He sat speechless for some moments and stared into the empty air. He turned pale; and his eyes grew small, pinched, and wicked. "How do you know it?" he burst forth, hoarsely.