I turned my head away, hardly knowing how to begin. At last I said,--

"I wasn't sure, Jamie, that you wanted Mary. You know there was some one
else you were often with."

He lay for some time without speaking. At last he said, slowly,--"I
see,--I see,--I see,"--three times. Then, turning his eyes away from me,
he kept on,--"What should you think, Joseph, if I were to tell you that
I had seen Margaret before she came to your place?"

"Seen Margaret?" I repeated.

"Yes," he replied; "and I will tell you where. You see, when I found
mother was dead, and nobody cared whether I went up or down in the
world, that I turned downwards. I got with a bad set,--learned to drink
and gamble. One night, in the streets of Boston, I got into a quarrel
with a young man, a stranger. We were both drunk. I don't remember doing
it, but they told me afterwards that I stabbed him. This sobered us
both. He was laid on a bed in an upper room in the Lamb Tavern. I was
awfully frightened, thinking he would die. That was about two months
before I shipped aboard the Eliza Ann.

"After his wound was dressed, he begged me to go for his sister, and
gave me the street and number. His name was Arthur Holden. His sister
was your Margaret. Our acquaintance began at his bedside. We took turns
in the care of him.

"They were a family well off in the world, with nothing to trouble them
but his wickedness. He would not be respectable, would go with bad
company.