year ago. His health was at that time poor, and he was unable to leave Europe, where he was traveling. He wrote to his brother, but the letter came back unopened. My father never grew better. He thought that, if I could see my uncle and lay the case before him, he might go down to his grave without the old hate rankling in his heart.”

     The youth grew excited, and paced up and down the deck. Then he continued:

     “I am to see this savage monster—this irate beast, as I have learned to regard him—and run the risk of hearing the memory of my father reviled, and his name insulted. It seems as if Icould not bear it. His living face is yet too fresh in my memory. But the mission is intrusted to me, and I must fulfill it. I will tell him the facts, and my duty will have been done.”

     Leonard Lester looked upon his cousin as he spoke, and smiled a pitying smile.

     “It is rather tough,” he said, “to be obliged to get down on your knees to such an individual as I imagine your, or, rather, our uncle, to be—for I suppose he must be my uncle, since you and I are cousins, although I have never seen him. But I believe I am to accompany you, and if he lets off too much steam, I will let off some, too. I can do it, when there’s occasion.”

     His eyes proclaimed the truth of what he said.

     Leonard Lester and Carlos Conrad were distant cousins, and cherished a strong regard for each other. Carlos was the son of Anthony Conrad, who, years before, had married a Spanish girl. Her dark beauty had won the affection of the American, and they had lived together tenyears, when she died. The only fruit of the union was a boy, whom they named Carlos. He inherited the warm and voluptuous nature of his mother, and the firm and stable, though somewhat passionate, character of his father. And there was within him a vein of delicate sensibility, peculiarly his own, which added to the refinement of his nature, though it might at times render him weak and irresolute. A considerable portion of his life had been spent in Europe, near the home of his mother, and in other portions of the Continent.

     His father had died but a few weeks before the time at which this chapter opens, and had charged Carlos with a mission which, as we have seen, he was about to undertake.

     Leonard Lester was connected with a large importing house in New York. He had been abroad on business for the firm 

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