"You are heated!" he said, "Walter Harrison; but if I understand you right, there is still a hope, through your means, of saving William Delaware from all the evils that you have brought upon him." "Hear me, sir--hear me!" replied the young sailor, "Only tell me what is necessary to save him; and if you bid me hang a slipknot to the yard-arm, then put my neck in it, and cast myself off, I'll do it." "I take you at your word," said Beauchamp. "There is but one way to clear him--but one way to restore him to that clear and honourable character which he always maintained in life, notwithstanding poverty." "Ay, there it is! There it is!" cried the young man; "clear and honourable, and yet poor--as poor for his rank as I was for mine--ay, and I might have had a clear and honourable name, too--but never mind--never mind--it is all coming to an end soon!" And casting himself down in a chair, he pressed his hands over his eyes. "You lose your self-command, Walter," said Beauchamp. "Be calm, and let us speak over this business rationally." "Calm! Calm!" cried the young sailor, starting up. "How the devil would you have me calm, when you are speaking of things that are burning in my heart like coals of fire? How can I be calm?" "You came here," said Beauchamp, somewhat sternly, "with a fixed determination, I suppose, of some kind--either intending to do right or to do wrong--to make the only reparation that you can for the crimes you have committed, by delivering your benefactor from the consequences of your errors--or boldly to deny what you have committed. If you intend to do right, the first noble and generous determination that you have formed for long, should teach you to execute your purpose with the calmness and fortitude of a man." "You say true, sir--you say true!" replied the youth, in a tone of deep melancholy. "You always say true; and if I had attended to what you told me when you brought me home from the fire that night, I should not have felt as I do now--but there is no use of talking of that--I did come here with the intention of doing right; and I will do right, if you will tell me how. What I want to do, is to clear the captain of every thing, and make it so plain that he never had any hand in the bad business, that even those old devils at Emberton shall have nothing to say. You were going to tell me the way when I stopped you. Now, I will stick at nothing, either on my own account, or that of others--for as to that accursed ruffian who entrapped me into the business, I have had many a black thought, when he sneers at me because I am sorry, to finish him myself." "Your only way, then, to make the reparation you propose," replied Beauchamp, "is to give such information as may lead to the apprehension and conviction of the men who actually committed the murder--for, from what you have said, I am led to believe that you had no absolute share in the deed itself."