“I am no Captain,” said he in a whine, “but plain Dan Risk, the blackest sinner under the cope and canopy of heaven.” And he applied himself to his volume as before. “Do you know me?” I asked, and he must have found the voice familiar, for he rose from his stool, approached the bars of his cage, and examined me. “Andy Greigs nephew!” he cried. “It's you; I hope you're a guid man?” “I might be the best of men--and that's a dead one--so far as you are concerned,” I replied, stung a little by the impertinence of him. “The hand of Providence saved me that last item in my bloody list o' crimes,” said he, with a singular mixture of the whine for his sins and of pride in their number. “Your life was spared, I mak' nae doubt, that ye micht repent o' your past, and I'm sorry to see ye in sic fallals o' dress, betokenin' a licht mind and a surrender to the vanities.” My dress was scantily different from what it had been on the _Seven Sisters_, except for some lace, my tied hair, and a sword. “Indeed, and I am in anything but a light frame of mind, Captain Risk,” I said. “There are reasons for that, apart from seeing you in this condition which I honestly deplore in spite of all the wrong you did me.” “I thank God that has been forgiven me,” he said, with a hypocritical cock of his hale eye. “I was lost in sin, a child o' the deevil, but noo I am made clean,” and much more of the same sort that it is unnecessary here to repeat. “You can count on my forgiveness, so far as that goes,” I said, disgusted with his manner. “I'm greatly obleeged,” said he, “but man's forgiveness doesna coont sae muckle as a preen, and I would ask ye to see hoo it stands wi' yersel', Daniel Risk has made his peace wi' his Maker, but what way is it wi' the nephew o' Andrew Greig?” “It ill becomes a man in a condemned cell to be preacher to those outside of it,” I told him in some exasperation at his presumption. He threw up his hands and glowered at me with his gleed eye looking seven ways for sixpence as the saying goes. “Dinna craw ower crouse, young man,” he said. “Whit brings ye here I canna guess, but I ken that you that's there should be in here where I am, for there's blood on your hands.” He had me there! Oh, yes, he had me there! Every vein in my body told me so. But I was not in the humour to make an admission of that kind to this creature. “I have no conceit of myself in any respect whatever, Daniel Risk,” I said slowly. “I came here from France but yesterday after experiences there that paid pretty well for my boy's crime, for I have heard from neither kith nor kin since you cozened me on the boards of the _Seven Sisters_.” He put his hands upon the bars and looked at me. He wore a prison garb of the most horrible colour, and there were round him the foul stenches of the cell.