Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/436



Ralph met Captain Horn that afternoon, there rose within him a sudden, involuntary appreciation of the captain's worthiness to possess a ship-load of gold and his sister Edna. Before that meeting there had been doubts in the boy's mind in regard to this worthiness. He believed that he had thoroughly weighed and judged the character and capacities of the captain of the Castor, and he had said to himself, in his moments of reflection, that although Captain Horn was a good man, and a brave man, and an able man in many ways, there were other men in the world who were better fitted for the glorious double position into which this fortunate mariner had fallen.

But now, as Ralph sat and gazed upon his sister's lover and heard him talk, and as he turned from him to Edna's glowing eyes, he acknowledged, without knowing it, the transforming power of those two great alchemists,—gold and love,—and from the bottom of his heart he approved the match.

Upon Mrs. Cliff the first sight of Captain Horn had been a little startling, and had she not hastened to assure herself that the compact with Edna was a thing 420