"Well, Robin!" exclaimed the Skipper in astonishment.
"It is not well," replied the manikin; "it cannot be well when the devil
turns nurse-tender. He would not have been so careful of your health, if
he thought your life would be of long duration. And why point out this
path?--it is not the shortest; and if it were, what cares he for our
legs? Wanting me to stay at the Place too--it's all ill. Besides, I saw
him watching us from the window: why should he watch us? was it love,
think ye? Go to, Master Dalton, you are not the man you were: let us
strike into another path; I will be all ears and eyes, and do you keep
your arms in readiness."
"You are right, Robin; you are right--right in one thing, at all
events," replied Dalton, leaning his arm against a tree, and pressing
his forehead with his hand; "I am not, indeed, the man I was! The lion
spirit is yet within me; but, Robin, that spirit which never quailed to
mortal authority, is become weak and yielding as a young girl's heart,
to the still, but appalling voice of my own conscience. After every
effort there is a re-action:--the blood!--the blood, shed through my
instrumentality, and often by my own hand, rises before me, like a
crimson cloud, and shuts out all that is pure and holy from my sight. It
used not to be thus! My passions--my whirlwind passions, that carried me
forward for so many years--are dead, or dying. It takes time to wind me
up to a brave action:--my joints are stiffening, and crack within their
sockets, when called upon to do their duty. The very good I would, I
cannot! This Walter, whom I love next to my own Barbara--to find him in
the lion's net! That Jewish girl I sought, merely to save her from yon
hell-hound's grasp!--she unconsciously eludes my search; in some shape
or other she will be sacrificed. I am sick--sick of villains and
villany! With wealth enough to purchase lands, broader and fairer than
these we now tread upon, I would thank God, night and day upon my bended
knees, to make me as one of the poor hinds, who has not wherewith to
purchase a morning meal--or as a savage--a wild untamed savage--who
hunts the woods for food!"
"You'd do foolishly then, Captain; under favour, very foolishly,"
replied Robin, yielding to the Buccaneer's humour, and yet seeking to
calm it away. "Know ye not that every rose has its own thorns, and every
bosom its own stings? Besides," he continued, faintly, "the wealth you
speak of will richly dower Barbara; make her a match for a gentleman, or
mayhap a knight!"