“Matrimony; a wife and no wife; a pretty face and a rich bride: do I speak plain, now, captain?”

“If you know any thing relating to my wife, say it at once; you need not fear for your reward.”

“Ay, captain, I have drove many a bargain in my time, and sometimes I have been paid in money, and sometimes I have been paid in promises; now the last are what I call pinching food.”

“Name your price.”

“Twenty—no, damn, it, it’s worth thirty dollars, if it’s worth a cent!”

“Here, then, is your money: but remember, if you tell me nothing worth knowing, I have a force that can easily deprive you of it again, and punish your insolence in the bargain.”

The fellow examined the bank-bills he received, with a jealous eye, and then pocketed them, apparently well satisfied of their being genuine.

“I like a northern note,” he said very coolly; “they have a character to lose like myself. No fear of me, captain; I am a man of honour, and I shall not tell you a word more, nor a word less than I know of my own knowledge to be true.”

“Proceed then without further delay, or I may repent, and order you to be deprived of all your gains; the silver as well as the notes.”

“Honour, if you die for it!” returned the miscreant, holding up a hand in affected horror at so treacherous a threat. “Well, captain, you must know that gentlemen don’t all live by the same calling; some keep what they’ve got, and some get what they can.”

“You have been a thief.”

“I scorn the word. I have been a humanity hunter. Do you know what that means? Ay, it has many interpretations. Some people think the woolly-heads are miserable, working on hot plantations under a broiling sun—and all such sorts of inconveniences. Well, captain, I have been, in my time, a man who has been willing to give them the pleasures of variety, at least, by changing the scene for them. You understand me?”

“You are, in plain language, a kidnapper.”

“Have been, my worthy captain—have been; but just now a little reduced, like a merchant who leaves off selling tobacco by the hogshead, to deal in it by the yard. I have been a soldier, too, in my day. What is said to be the great secret of our trade, can you tell me that?”

“I know not,” said Middleton, beginning to tire of the fellow’s trifling: “courage?”

“No, legs—legs to fight with, and legs to run away with—and therein you see my two callings agreed. My legs are none of the best just now, and without legs a kidnapper would carry on a losing trade; but then there are men enough left, better provided than I am.”

“Stolen!” groaned the horror-struck husband.

“On her travels, as sure as you are standing still!”

“Villain, what reason have you for believing a thing so shocking?”