The Walloon was thick-skulled, but his long service in villany had increased his cunning as a matter of course, and a duller man than he, acquainted with Señor de Ladron’s peculiarities, might have jumped to a like conclusion. “Bah! he wasn’t a coward after all. The arquebuse that sent this ball was behind him while he faced the Dons. The man you owe a grudge to had better keep awake, Hilo, my lad.” “You’re a fool,” Hilo returned. “Hold your tongue. Do you wish to bring the Spaniards upon us with your noise?” To which the other answered sullenly—“You talk as if I wasn’t more than your slave. You’d better mind what you’re about. I aint going to stand it always, even if—here now, what’s to be done with these papers?” “What is that shining in your hand?” “A locket, or something of the sort, he had in his breast. Hang it, you want every thing!” “A locket!” cried his comrade quickly. “Give it here.” Which the other did unwillingly, and the other pocketed after holding it up to the light. Hilo’s mood up to this moment had been none of the sweetest, as the captain could testify, but some virtue existed in the appropriation which was quite irresistible. “Come, old fellow,” he cried to the serjeant, in high good-humor, “I was rather sharp with you just now, wasn’t I? You know I’m quick and all that, and musn’t mind me. Here’s a handful of ducats for your locket, as you found it; I fancy the thing, and don’t grudge paying for it.” A gift the captain took with a growl half of resentment, for _he_ had not found a charm for himself, and could not so easily forget an offense as his master. It was wonderful what a dog to fetch and carry that uncouth animal was to Hilo; how he followed him about, drew dagger in his service, and exposed his life any time rather than suffer the latter to embark alone in a perilous venture, a thing his youthful friend was much given to. It would have been an unanswerable proof of the existence in all men of some good trait, some capacity to love a brother, for a worse rogue than the captain would be difficult to select. But, unhappily, this Netherlandish Damon had sounder, if less sentimental, reasons for sticking by his Pythias. Hilo, a wonderfully precocious youth, had fallen in with the honest captain some three or four years back, and dexterously turned to his personal advantage a comfortable sum brought over from Peru by the other. “I like the boy, he’s full of pluck. I’ll school him into the ways of the world, look ye,” the captain used to say, at the very time his protégé was scheming to possess his ingots.