What I
heard from Miss Matty was that he had been a volunteer at the siege
of Rangoon; had been taken prisoner by the Burmese; and somehow
obtained favour and eventual freedom from knowing how to bleed the
chief of the small tribe in some case of dangerous illness; that on
his release from years of captivity he had had his letters returned
from England with the ominous word "Dead" marked upon them; and,
believing himself to be the last of his race, he had settled down
as an indigo planter, and had proposed to spend the remainder of
his life in the country to whose inhabitants and modes of life he
had become habituated, when my letter had reached him; and, with
the odd vehemence which characterised him in age as it had done in
youth, he had sold his land and all his possessions to the first
purchaser, and come home to the poor old sister, who was more glad
and rich than any princess when she looked at him. She talked me
to sleep at last, and then I was awakened by a slight sound at the
door, for which she begged my pardon as she crept penitently into
bed; but it seems that when I could no longer confirm her belief
that the long-lost was really here--under the same roof--she had
begun to fear lest it was only a waking dream of hers; that there
never had been a Peter sitting by her all that blessed evening--but
that the real Peter lay dead far away beneath some wild sea-wave,
or under some strange eastern tree.
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