“I knew his father in Peru very well, a man of money. He lent me a helping hand once, and I don’t mind turning about and lending the boy any thing I have,” he spoke later. And so, not because of the helping hand, as the captain wished understood—which, to be sure, was Carlo’s beginning in life, the elder De Ladron having taken him into temporary partnership in the matter of a forced _repartimiénto_ which turned out golden—but because he had entire reliance in the magnitude of the senior’s estate, he made over to Hilo the bulk of his possessions, on conditions legally witnessed, of a fourfold return immediately on the other’s receiving his own. No doubt Hilo acted in good faith, less from inclination possibly than necessity, his money affairs having become rather intricate about that time, and there could be no question of the repayment of the full amount—the original was no trifle—at the season specified. But when was that to arrive? A question Carlo asked himself with growing dissatisfaction not long after the last ducat had slipped through his debtor’s fingers. Hilo was in no hurry to marry the girl, and since signing the captain’s bond, had bestowed his affections elsewhere, as people say. A French countess, black-eyed and brisk, took his fancy much more than the blonde his betrothed, and during the stay of the French embassage at Madrid, the young gentleman was on good behavior—ostensibly at least. Of all her gallants none excited his jealousy so much as a cavalier who had accompanied the count unofficially, and stood high in his daughter’s favor. Don Hilo’s way of removing an obstacle of this sort, was admirably illustrative of his sense of wrong, although sometimes, as in this instance, liable to miscarry. He first picked a quarrel with De Haye, and that gentleman refusing point-blank to fight so disreputable a party, was waylaid and killed by proxy in the person of Villenos, who was of much the same figure, and, as it chanced that night, similarly attired. The eclat of this mistake, added to the departure of the lady, took him to France, where information of De Haye’s joining the commandant induced him to enlist under the same knight’s pennon, in pursuance of his vengeful purpose, and the young blood-hound was of course nothing molified by the remonstrance of his enemy to De Chaste on shipboard, which Carlo repeated with some little exaggeration, to be expected from the mouth of so affectionate a friend. The heavy, cunning, ex-free-captain was brow-beaten and domineered over by his former protégé in a truly surprising manner to one not in the secret. It was wonderful how much he bore, how assiduously followed at the heels of his junior when off duty, uneasy at losing sight of the latter. The truth was, the captain having gambled and squandered himself into poverty again, looked to the money to be derived from Hilo’s fortune for a means of reputable living, as he said.