I turned to go.  Shiela, she was nervous too, but smiling.  “Shiela—­”

“You’re not going back to the ship?”

“But I must—­I must.”

“No, you’re not—­and you must not.  Here.”  She had taken the bewaxed and beribboned package from her little handbag.  It was addressed to “Guy Villard, Esq., Villard Manor, Chatham County, Ga.”

“But who is he?”

“Who is he?  Who are you?”

“Guy Blaise.”

“No, you’re not.  Open it and read.  Or wait, let me read it.”

And it is true that not till then did I suspect.  I thought that I might have been his son, or the son of some wild friend, born of a marriage on the West Coast or other foreign parts.  But of this thing I never had a suspicion.

I was the baby boy picked up in the wreckage of the burning ship.  There were the marriage certificates of my father and mother, and the title deeds to the Villard estate.  It had been a great temptation—­he the next of kin, my father’s cousin, and no one knowing.  And he, too, feared the strange blood.  But watching my growth, he had come to love me, and wanted me to love him, and feared my contempt if I should learn.  All this was explained in a letter in a small envelope, written recently and hastily.  Together, Shiela and I, we finished the reading of it: 

Though I’m not so sure now that you shouldn’t thank me for withholding your inheritance until the quality of your manhood was assured.  It is true that I imperilled your mortal body a score of times, but through fifty-score weeks I nurtured your immortal soul, Guy.

And now I am going back to that sea wherein I expect to find rest at the last, and let my friends make no mourning over it, Guy.  ’Tis a beautiful clean grave, no mould nor crawling worms there.  But if it be that the sea will have none of me, and the metalled war-dogs drive me, and spar-shattered and hull-battered I make a run of it to harbor in my old age, I shall come in full confidence of a mooring under your roof, Guy.  And who knows that I won’t be worth my salt there?

You have won her, Guy.  I knew you would from that night in Momba when you sat in the stern sheets and laughed.  ’Twas in your laugh that night, though you did not suspect it.  But I know.  The tides of youth were surging in you.  Beauty, wit, and courage—­with these in any man I will measure sword; but the tides of youth are of eternal power.

I should like to dance your children on my knee, Guy, and lull the songs of the sea into their little ears.  I’ve a fine collection by now, Guy—­you’ve no idea—­ringing chanties to get a ship under way, and roaring staves of the High Barbaree, ballads of the gale, and lullabies of west winds and summer nights.  And your children, Guy, will grow up none the less brave gentlemen and fine ladies for the strengthening salt of the sea in their blood and the clearing whiff