The Buccaneer - A Tale

"It will not do!" said the young man, whom Dalton had addressed by the

name of Walter; "something has disturbed you: surely, Captain, I may ask

what it is?"

"Some forty years ago I had a father," replied the Buccaneer, looking

earnestly in the youth's face; "he was an aged man then, for he did not

marry until he was old, and my mother was beautiful, and quitted his

side: but that does not matter; only it shows how, as my poor father had

nothing else to love, he loved me with the full tenderness of a most

affectionate nature. He was a clergyman too, and a firm royalist; one of

those devoted royalists, as regarded both God and king, who would

submit, for their sakes, to the stake or the block with rapture at being

thought worthy to make the sacrifice. Well, I was wild and wilful, and

even then would rather steal a thing than gain it by lawful means: not

that I would have stolen aught to keep it, for I was generous enough;

but I loved the danger and excitement of theft, and, on the occasion I

speak of, I had taken some apples from a neighbouring tree belonging to

a poor woman. It was evening when I took this unlucky fruit; and not

knowing a safe place in which to deposit it, I was restless and

disturbed all night. The next day, from a cause I could not guess at, my

father would not suffer me to go out, and was perpetually, on some

pretext or other, going to and from the cupboard where my treasure had

been placed. I was in agony; and as night again closed in, the agitation

and anxiety I had suffered made me ill and pale. My dear father drew

near him the little oak table that was set apart for the Bible, and,

opening it, said that he had that day composed a sermon for my especial

case. I dreaded that my apple-stealing had been discovered; and I was

right, though he did not say so. He enlarged in sweet and simple

language upon his text: it was this--'There is no peace, saith my God,

to the wicked.' Walter! Walter! the old man has been many years in his

grave, and I have been as many a reckless wanderer over the face of the

wild earth and still wilder sea; but I have never done a deed of blood

and plunder, that those words have not echoed--echoed in my ears, struck

upon my heart like the fiend's curse. Yet," he added in a subdued

accent, "it was no cursing lips pronounced them: I have been the curse

to the holy words, not they to me."