Comethup looked at him in amazement for a moment--amazement not unmixed with awe, for the man appeared so desperately in earnest. "You don't understand," he said at last. "But since you think of her so much, and because I know you were her friend when she was very young, let me tell you that I love her very dearly, and that she is to be my wife."
"Your wife! Ah! there was some one else who said that once. It is such an easy thing to say! Yet you look--yes, you seem honest. I remember I liked your face when you were a child. Will you swear it?"
"Why, of course, if you won't believe my bare word."
"Yes, but what will you swear by?" He glanced up at the starlit sky. "Not by the stars: there is no firmness or strength about them; they glitter and shine to-night, and all the heavens blaze with them; to-morrow you shall not see one of them. No, there's no constancy about the stars."
"By the moon, then," said Comethup lightly, willing to humour him.
"No, not by the moon; that's lovers' nonsense--they all swear by that. But there--you need not swear. I can read men's faces like a book, and I have read yours. Only be good to her, be true to her--for her sake and your own. For the man who wrongs her"--he shook a trembling, knotted forefinger in the air--"the man who wrongs her deals first with me and afterward with his God. She came to me a mite of a child, sent straight by God to fill an ache in my heart; came to me with smiling eyes, just as another baby--or was it the same?--I always forget--just as another baby once came to me. She belongs to me, and no man shall harm her."
"You don't think that I shall harm her, do you?" asked Comethup gently.
"No, _you_ will not; but others may. I can not rest for thoughts of her--dreams of her. I do not know which are the dreams and which the waking. But I have crept at night about her house to see that all was well with her; I have been like a faithful dog, to guard the place where she sleeps. For that is her power: she draws all to her who have seen her once. But she draws the good and the evil alike."
Muttering to himself he turned abruptly and went rapidly toward the centre of the town, where his own dwelling was. Comethup looked after him for a moment, and then went thoughtfully back to the captain's house. The captain had gone to bed, but had left a light burning in the little parlour for Comethup. On the table lay a packet addressed to him from London. On breaking the seal he found that the envelope contained two or three letters which had arrived for him in his absence, and had been forwarded by Miss Carlaw's housekeeper.