“He emptied his glass again, in a way which showed that he was hardly sensible of the action, and, ‘Mr. Miller,’ said he, ‘there is that about you which reminds me of old days, and that, perhaps, is one reason I’ve taken a fancy to you. It doesn’t matter a rope-yarn whether you join me or not; my mind is fixed to its course. You shall hear the whole, however, and judge for yourself before you decide—which is more than I would care to reveal to any other man that breathes.’ He flung his sheroot on the deck as he spoke, and mechanically setting his foot upon it, bared his sinewy arm to the elbow, in the lamp-light. ‘Do you see those initials?’ he said, in a tone of unnatural calmness. Sure enough there they were—his wife’s, I had no doubt—E. S. B., dotted in India ink, and two hearts, worked one within the other, under them. As I looked in his face for the explanation which was to follow, I saw that it was fearfully changed; and although his eyes met mine, at first steadily enough, a strange sort of a spasm contorted the muscles of his jaw, as if he looked, as it were, through me at some horrible sight, with his teeth set, and his thin nether lip drawn tightly in. The truth, or at least an inkling of it, I had had already from the second mate, and in spite of the terrible doubts in my mind, and the rascally scheme he had hinted at, I confess I could not help feeling somewhat softened toward the man. Perhaps he noticed this in my looks, for, with a shivering sigh, he placed his elbows on the table, and covering his eyes with his hands, although not a groan or a moan escaped from his lips, I knew by the tears which forced their way through his fingers, and the quiver of his strong frame, that some hard struggle was going on. I sat still in pure wonder at this sudden outbreak of feeling—the initials, as it were, staring me full in the face, and the man’s damp forehead, with its mass of dark curls within reach of my hand—until a strange thought that I had seen him before in some old, familiar place, came slowly thrilling into mind. Where this might have been I could not, at the moment, conjecture; but as he removed his hands and I looked anxiously at his features, I felt almost sure that it had been years before, in some scene of summer-revelry, with trees and horses in front, and woman’s soft eyes on the background. Perhaps it was the altered look of Catherton himself, which brought the last into my mind in the cabin of the old Tartar, to be associated in some unaccountable way with that tall, muscular frame, and that dark, gloomy face, frowning as if ashamed of his emotion, though it might be, the tears had done him good. At any rate, the idea oppressed me so forcibly that, before he composed himself to speak again, I glanced nervously round the cabin, taking in every object as well as I could by the smoky light—from the state-rooms, on the larboard side, with their musty, sickening smell, to the rack in the