"Is this an unlawful assembly?" my father asked.

"It is worse, Sir John; it is far worse. I have been studying the law, and the law admits of no dubiety. It is unlawful assembly where three or more persons meet together to carry out some private enterprise in circumstances calculated to excite alarm. Mark those words, Sir John—" some private enterprise. "When the enterprise is not private but meant to redress a public grievance, or to reform religion, the offence becomes high treason."

"Does the law indeed say so?"

"It does, Sir John. The law, let me tell you, is very fierce against any reforming of religion. Nay more, Sir John, under the first of King George the First, statute two—I forget what chapter—by the Act commonly called the Riot Act, it is enacted that if a dozen or more go about reforming of religion or otherwise upsetting the public peace and refuse to go about their business within the space of one hour after I tell 'em to, the same becomes felony without benefit of clergy."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Billy Priske, pulling off his hat and eyeing the rose in its band.

"And further," his Worship continued, "any man wearing the badge or ensign of the rioters shall himself be considered a rioter without benefit of clergy."

All this while the crowd had been pressing closer and closer upon us, under compulsion (as it seemed) of reinforcements from the waterside, the purlieus of the Market Strand being, by now, so crowded that men and women were crying out for room. At this moment, glancing across the square, I was puzzled to see a woman leaning forth from a first-floor window and dropping handfuls of artificial flowers upon the heads of the throng. While I watched, she retired—her hands being empty—came back with a band-box, and scattered its contents broadcast, pausing to blow a kiss towards the Mayor.

I plucked my father's sleeve to call his attention to this; but he and the Mayor were engaged in argument, his Worship maintaining that the Methodists—and my father that their assailants—were the prime disturbers of the peace.

"And how, pray," asked my father, "are these poor women to disperse, if your ruffians won't let 'em?"

"As to that, sir, you shall see," promised the Mayor, and turned to the town crier. "John Sprott, call silence. Make as much noise about it as you can, John Sprott. And you, Nandy Daddo, catch hold of my horse's bridle here."

He rose in his stirrups and, searching again in his tail-pocket, drew forth a roll of paper.

"Silence!" bawled the crier.

"Louder, if you please, John Sprott: louder, if you can manage it! And say 'In the name of King George,' John Sprott; and wind up with 'God save the King.' For without 'God save the King' 'tis no riot, and a man cannot be hanged for it. So be very particular to say 'God save the King,' John Sprott, and put 'em all in the wrong."

John Sprott bawled again, and this time achieved the whole formula.

"That's better, John Sprott. And you—" his Worship turned upon the Methodists, "you just listen to this, now—"

"Our sovereign Lord the King—"

Here, as the Methodists stood before him with folded hands, a lump of filth flew past the Mayor's ear and bespattered the lamp-post.

"Damme, who did that?" his Worship demanded. "John Sprott, who threw that muck?"

"I don't know the man's name, your Worship: but he's yonder, there, in a striped shirt open at the neck, with a little round hat on the back of his head; and, what's more, I see'd him do it."

"Then take down his description, John Sprott, and write that at the words 'Our sovereign Lord' he shied a lump of muck."

John Sprott pulled out a note-book and entered the offence.

"And after 'muck,' John Sprott, write 'God save the King.' I don't know that 'tis necessary, but you'll be on the safe side." His Worship unfolded the proclamation again, cleared his throat, and resumed:

"Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves and peacefully to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the Act made in the first year of George the First for preventing—"

A handful of more or less liquid mud here took him on the nape of the neck and splashed over the paper which he held in both hands.

"Arrest that man!" he shouted, bouncing about in a fury. At the same moment my father gripped my elbow as a volley of missiles darkened the air, and we fell back—all the Company of the Rose—shoulder to shoulder, to protect the Methodists, as a small but solid phalanx of men came driving through the crowd with mischief in their faces.

"But wait awhile! wait awhile!" called out Billy Priske, as my father plucked out his sword. "These be no enemies, master, to us or the Methodists, but honest sea-fardingers—packet-men all—and, look you, with roses in their hats!"

"Roses? Faith, and so they have!" cried my father, lowering his guard. "But what the devil, then, is the meaning of it?"

He was answered on the moment. The official whom his Worship called Nandy Daddo had made a rush into the crowd, charging it with his mace as with a battering-ram, and was in the act of clutching the man who had thrown the filth, when the phalanx of packet-men broke through and bore him down. A moment later I saw his gold-laced hat fly skimming over the heads of the throng, and his mace wrenched from him and held aloft in the hands of a red-faced man, who flourished it twice and rushed upon the Mayor, shouting at the same time with all his lungs: "Townshends! This way, Townshends!" whereat the packet-men cheered and pressed after him, driving the crowd of Falmouth to right and left.

Clearly what mischief they meant was intended for the Mayor: and the Mayor, for a short-sighted man, detected this very promptly. Also he showed surprising agility in tumbling out of his saddle; which he had scarcely done before the crupper resounded with a whack, of which one of the borough maces bears an eloquent dent to this day.

The Mayor, catching his toe in the stirrup as he slipped off, staggered and fell at our feet. But the body of his horse, interposed between him and the rioters, protected him for an instant, and in that instant my father and Nat Fiennes dragged him up and thrust him to the rear while we faced the assault. For now, and without a word said, the Methodists were forgotten, and we of the Rose were standing for law and order against this other company of the Rose, of whose quarrel we knew nothing at all.

Our attitude indeed, and the sight of drawn swords (to oppose which they had no weapons but short cudgels), appeared to take them aback for the moment. The press, however, closing on us, as we backed to cover the Mayor's retreat, offered less and less occasion for sword play; and, the seamen still advancing and outnumbering us by about three to one, the whole affair began to wear an ugly look.

At this juncture relief came to us in the strangest fashion. I had clean forgotten the little Methodist man in black; whom, to be sure, I had no occasion to remember but for the quiet resolution of his carriage as he had stood with the burst egg trickling over his face. But now, to the surprise of us all, he sprang forward upon the second mace-bearer, snatched the mace from his hand and laid about him in a sudden frenzy; at the first blow, delivered at unawares, catching the ringleader on the crown and felling him like an ox. For a second, perhaps, he stared, amazed at his own prowess, and with that the lust of battle seized him.

He rained blows; yet with cunning, running forth and back into our ranks as each was delivered; and between the blows he capered, uttering shrill inarticulate cries. This diversion indeed saved us. For the rabble, pressing up to see the fun, left a space more or less clear on the far side of the Market Strand, and for this space we stampeded, dragging the Mayor along with us.

The next thing I remember was fighting side by side with Nat before a door beneath the window where I had seen the woman throwing down her handfuls of artificial flowers. The lower windows were barred, but the door stood open; and we fought to defend it whilst my father lifted the Mayor of Falmouth by his coat-collar and the seat of his breeches and flung him inside. Then we too backed and, ducking indoors under the arms of the little man in black—who stood on the step swinging the borough mace as though to scythe off the head of any one who approached within five feet of it—seized him by the coat-tails, dragged him inside and, slamming to the door (which shut with two flaps), locked and bolted it and leant against it with all our weight.

Yet a common house-door is but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a minute's respite at the best.

It puzzled me therefore when—and immediately upon two ugly blows that had well-nigh shaken the lock from its fastenings—the shouting suddenly subsided into a confused hubbub of voices, followed by a clang and rattle of arms upon the cobblestones. This last sound appeared to hush the others into silence. I stood listening, with my hip pressed against the lock to hold it firm against the next concussion. None came: but presently some one rapped with his knuckles on the upper panel and a voice, authoritative but civil enough, challenged us in the name of King George to open.

To this I had almost answered bidding him go to the devil, when a damsel put her head over the stair-rail of the landing above and called down to us to obey and open at once: and looking up in the dim light of the passage I recognized her for the one who had scattered the flowers, just now, to the rioters.

"Pardon me," said I, "but how shall I know you are not playing us a trick?"

"My good child," she replied, "open the door and don't stand arguing. The riot is over and the square full of military. The person who knocks is Captain Bright of the Pendennis Garrison. If you don't believe me, step upstairs here and look out of window."

"My father—" I began.

"Your father is right enough, and so is that fool of a Mayor—or will be when he has drunk down a glass of cordial."

Nevertheless I would not obey her until I had sent Nat Fiennes upstairs to look; who within a minute called over the stair-head that the woman told the truth and I had my father's leave to open. Thereupon I pulled open the upper flap of the door, and stood blinking at a tall officer in gorgeous regimentals.

"Hullo!" said he. "Good morning!"

"Good morning!" said I. "And forgive me that I kept you waiting."

"Don't mention it," said he very affably. "My fault entirely, for coming late; or rather the Mayor's, who sent word that we weren't needed. I took the liberty to doubt this as soon as my sentries reported that a couple of boats' crews were putting ashore from the Townshend packet: and here we are in consequence. Got him safe?"

"The Mayor?" said I. "Yes, I believe he is upstairs at this moment, drinking brandy-and-water and pulling himself together."

The Captain grinned amiably. "Sorry to disturb him," said he; "but the mob is threatening to burn his house, and I'd best take him along to read the Riot Act and put things ship-shape."

"He has read it already, or some part of it."

"Some part of it won't do. He must read the whole proclamation, not forgetting 'God save the King.'"

"If you can find the paper," said I, "there's a lump of mud on it, marking the place where he left off."

The Captain grinned again. "I doubt he'll have to begin afresh after breaking off to drink brandy-and-water with Moll Whiteaway. For a chief magistrate that will need some explaining. And yet," mused the Captain, as he stepped into the passage, "you may have done him a better turn than ever you guessed; for, when the mob sees the humour of it, belike it'll be more for laughing than setting fire to his house."

"But who is Moll Whiteaway?" I asked.

He stared at me. "You mean to say you didn't know?" he asked slowly. "You didn't bring him here for a joke?"

"A joke?" I echoed. "A mighty queer joke, sir, you'd have thought it, if your men had been five minutes earlier."

He leaned back against the wall of the passage. "And you brought him here by accident? Well, if this don't beat cock-fighting!"

"But who is this Moll Whiteaway?" I repeated.

The question again seemed to take his breath away. For answer he could only point to a small brass plate in the lower flap of the door; and, stooping, I read: Miss Whiteaway, Milliner, Modes and Robes.

"Oh!" said I. "That accounts for the band-box of flowers."

"Does it?" he asked.

"She flung them out of window to the packet-men."

"Which, doubtless, seemed to you an everyday proceeding—just a milliner's usual way of getting rid of her summer stock. My good young sir, did you ever hear tell of a 'troacher'? Nay, spare that ingenuous blush: Moll is a loose fish, but I mean less than your modesty suspects. A 'troacher' is a kind of female smuggler that disposes of the goods the packet-men bring home in their bunks; and Moll Whiteaway is the head of the profession in Falmouth. Now, our worthy Mayor took oath the other day to put down this smuggling on board the packets; and he began yesterday with the Townshend. He and the Port Searcher swept the ship, sir. They dug Portuguese brandy in kegs out of the seamen's beds and parcels of silk out of the very beams. They shook two case-bottles out of the chaplain's breeches, which must have galled him sorely in his devotions. They netted close on two hundred pounds' worth of contraband in the fo'c's'le alone—"

"Good Heavens!" I interjected. "And as the riot began he was calling himself short-sighted!"

Captain Bright laughed, clapped me on the shoulder and led the way upstairs, where (strange to say) we found the Mayor again deploring his defective vision. He lay in an easy-chair amid an army of band-boxes, bonnet stands, and dummies representing the female figure; and sipped Miss Whiteaway's brandy while he discoursed in broken sentences to an audience consisting of that lady, my father, Nat Fiennes, Mr. Fett, and the little man in black (who, by the way, did not appear to be listening, but stood and pondered the borough mace, which he held in his hands, turning it over and examining the dents).

"It is a great drawback, Sir John—a great drawback," his Worship lamented. "A man in my position, sir, should have the eye of an eagle; instead of which on all public occasions I have to rely on John Sprott. My good woman"—he turned to Miss Whiteaway—"would you mind taking a glance out of window and telling me what has become of John Sprott?"

"He's down below under protection of the soldiers," announced Miss Whiteaway; "and no harm done but his hat lost and his gown split up the back."

"I shall never have the same confidence in John Sprott. He takes altogether too sanguine a view of human nature. Why, only last November—you remember the great gale of November the 1st, Sir John? I was very active in burying the poor bodies brought ashore next day and for several days after; for, as you remember, a couple of Indymen dragged their anchors and broke up under Pendennis Battery: and John Sprott said to me in the most assured way, 'The town'll never forget your kindness, sir. You mark my words,' he said, 'this here action will stand you upon the pinnacles of honour till you and me, if I may respectfully say it, sit down together in the land of marrow and fatness.' After that you'd have thought a man might count on some popularity. But what happened? A day or two later—that is to say, on November the 5th—I was sitting in my shop with a magnifying glass in my eye, cleaning out a customer's watch, when in walked half a dozen boys carrying a man's body between 'em. You could tell that life was extinct by the way his head hung back and his legs trailed limp on the floor as they brought him in, and his face looked to me terribly swollen and discoloured. 'Dear, dear!' said I. 'What? Another poor soul? Take him up to the mortewary, that's good boys,' I said; 'and you shall have twopence apiece out of the poor-box.' How d'ye think they answered me? They bust out a-laughing, and cries one: 'If you please, sir, 'tis meant for you! 'Tis the fifth of November, and we'm goin' to burn you in effigy.' I chased 'em out of the shop, and later on in the day I spoke to John Sprott about it. 'Well now,' said John Sprott,' I passed a lot of boys just now, burning a guy at the top of the Moor, and I had my suspicions; but the thing hadn't a feature of yours to take hold on, barrin' the size of its feet.' And that's what you call popularity!" wound up the Mayor with bitterness. "That's what a man gets for rising early and lying down late to serve his country!"

"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," put in Captain Bright, "but they are threatening to burn worse than your effigy fact I heard some talk of setting fire to your house and shop. Nay," he went on as the Mayor bounced up to his feet, "there's no real cause for alarm. I have sent on my lieutenant with fifty men to keep the mob on the move, and have stationed a dozen outside here to escort you home."

"The Riot Act—where's my Riot Act?" cried his Worship, searching his pockets. "I never read out 'God save the King,' and without 'God save the King' a man may burn all my valybles and make turbulent gestures and show of arms, and harry and murder to the detriment of the public peace, and refuse to move on when requested, and all the time in the eyes of the law be a babe unborn. Where's the Riot Act, I say? for without it I'm a lost man and good-bye to Falmouth!"

"Then 'tis lucky that I came provided with a copy." Captain Bright produced a paper from the breast of his tunic.

The Mayor took it with trembling hands. "Why, 'tis a duplicity!" he cried. "A very duplicity! and, what's more, printed in the same language word for word." He caught the mace from the little man in black. "Lead the way, Captain!"



CHAPTER IX.

I ENLIST AN ARMY.

"If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet." Sir John Falstaff.

My father turned to me as they descended the stair. "This is all very well, lad," said he, "but we have yet to find our army. After the murder of Julius Caesar, now—"

"I did enact Julius Caesar once," quoted Mr. Fett, in parenthesis. "I was killed i' the capitol; Brutus killed me."

My father frowned. "After the murder of Julius Caesar, when the mob for two days had Rome at their mercy, I have read somewhere that two men appeared out of nowhere, and put themselves at the head of the rioters. None knew them; but so boldly they comported themselves, heading the charges, marshalling the ranks, here throwing up barricades, there plucking down doors and gates, breaking open the prisons and setting fire to private houses, that presently the whisper spread they were Castor and Pollux; till, at length, falling into the hands of the aediles, these dioscuri were found to be two poor lunatics escaped from a house of detention. If we could discover another such pair among the mob, now!"

"We are wasting time here for certain," said I. "And where, by the way, is Billy Priske?"

"If you waste your time upstairs here, gentlemen," said Miss Whiteaway, "belike you may do better in the parlour, where I had prepared for some friends of mine with two-three chickens and a ham."

"Ah, to be sure," said I; "the packet-men!"

"Never you worry, young sir," she answered tartly, "so long as they don't mind eating after their betters. And as for your man Priske, I saw him twenty minutes ago escape towards Church Street with the Methodists."

"Hang it!" put in Nat Fiennes, "if I hadn't clean forgotten the Methodists!"

"We left them scurvily," said I; "every Jack and Jill of them but our friend here." I nodded toward the little man in black. "And he not only saved himself, but was half the battle."

The little man seemed to come out of himself with a start, and gazed from one to another of us perplexedly.

"Excuse me, gentlemen." He drew himself up with dignity. "Do my ears deceive me, or are you mistaking me for a Methodist?"

"Indeed, and are you not, sir?" asked my father. "Why, good God, gentlemen!—if you'll excuse me—but I'm the parish clerk of Axminster!"

My father recovered himself with a bow. "In Devon?" he asked gravely, after a pause in which our silence paid tribute to the announcement.

"In Devon, sir; a county remarkable for its attachment to the principles of the Church of England. And that I should have lived to be mistaken for a Methodist!"

"But, surely, John Wesley himself is a Clerk in Holy Orders? and, I have heard, a great stickler for the Church's authority."

"He may say so, sir," answered the little man, darkly. "He may say so. But, if he means it, why does he go about encouraging such a low class of people? A man, sir, is known by the company he keeps."

"Is that in the Bible?" my father inquired. "I seem to remember, on the contrary, that in the matter of consorting with publicans and sinners—"

"It won't work, sir. It has been tried in Axminster before now, and you may take my word for it that it won't work. You mustn't suppose, gentlemen," he went on, including us all in the argument, "you mustn't take me for one of those parrot-Christians who just echo what they hear in the pulpits on Sundays. I think about these things; and I find that your extreme doctrines may do all very well for the East and for hot countries where you can go about half-naked and nobody takes any notice; but the Church of England, as its name implies, is the only Church for England. A truly Christian Church, gentlemen, because it selects its doctrines from the Gospels; and English, sir, to the core, because it selects 'em with a special view to the needs of our beloved country. And what (if I may so put it) is the basis of that selection? The same, sirs, which we all admit to be the basis of England's welfare and the foundation of her society; in other words, the land. The land, gentlemen, is solid; and our reformed religion (say what you will, I am not denying that it has, and will ever have, its detractors) is the religion for solid Englishmen."

My father put out a hand and arrested Mr. Fett, who had been regarding the speaker with joyful admiration, and at this point made a movement to embrace him.

"I must have his name!" murmured Mr. Fett. "He shall at least tell us his name!"

"Badcock, sir; Ebenezer Badcock," answered the little man, producing a black-edged visiting-card.

"But," urged my father, "you must forgive us, Mr. Badcock, if we find it hard to reconcile your conduct this morning with these sentiments, on which, for the moment, I offer no comment except that they are admirably expressed. What song the Sirens sang, Mr. Badcock, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, are questions (as Sir Thomas Browne observes) not beyond conjecture, albeit the Emperor Tiberius posed his grammarians with 'em. But when a man openly champions street-preaching, and goes on to lay about him with a mace—"

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Badcock, with sudden eagerness. "And what—by the way, sir—did you think of that performance?"

"Why, to be sure, you behaved valiantly."

The little man blushed with pleasure. "You really think so? It struck you in that light, did it? Well, now I am glad—yes, sir, and proud—to hear that opinion; because, to tell you the truth, I thought it pretty fair myself. The fact is, gentlemen, I wasn't altogether sure what my behaviour would be at the critical moment. You may deem it strange that a man should arrive at my time of life without being sure whether he's a coward or a brave man; but Axminster—if you knew the place—affords few opportunities for that sort of thing."

"Allow us to reassure you, then," said my father. "But there remains the question, why you did it?"

Mr. Badcock rubbed his hands. "Appearances were against me, I'll allow," he answered, with a bashful chuckle; "but you may set it down to tchivalry. We all have our weaknesses, I hope, sir; and tchivalry is mine."

"Chivalry?" echoed my father.

"You spell it with an 's'? Excuse me; whatever schooling I have picked up has been at odd times; but I am always open to correction, I thank the Lord."

"But why call it a weakness, Mr. Badcock?"

"Call it a hobby; call it what you like. I look upon it as a debt, sir, due to the memory of my late wife. An admirable woman, sir, and by name Artemisia; which, I have sometimes thought, may partially account for it. Allow me, gentlemen." He drew a small shagreen case from his breast-pocket, opened it, and displayed a miniature.

"Her portrait?"

"In a sense. As a matter of fact, I will not conceal from you, gentlemen, that it came to me in the form of a pledge—that being my late profession—and I have never been able to trace the original. But, as I said when first I showed it to the late Mrs. B., 'My dear, you might have sat for it.' A well-developed woman, gentlemen, though in the end she went out like the snuff of a candle, that being the way sometimes with people who have never known an hour's sickness. 'Am I really like that, Ebenezer?' she asked. 'In your prime, my dear,' said I—she having married me late in life owing to her romantic nature—'in your prime, my dear, I'll defy any one to tell you and this party from two peas.' 'I wish I knew who she was,' said my wife. 'Hadn't you best leave well alone?' said I; 'for I declare till this moment I hadn't dreamed that another such woman as yourself existed in the world, and it gives me a kind of bigamous feeling which I can't say I find altogether unpleasant.' 'Then I'll keep the thing,' says she, very positively, 'until the owner turns up and redeems it;' which he never did, being, as I discovered, a strolling portrait painter very much down on his luck. So there the mystery remained. But (as I was telling you), though a first-rate manager, my poor dear wife had a number of romantic notions; and often she has said to me after I'd shut up shop, 'If wishes grew on brambles, Ebenezer, it's not a pawnbroker's wife I'd be at this moment.' 'Well, my dear,' I'd say to soothe her, 'there is a little bit of that about the profession, now you come to mention it.' 'And them there was a time,' she'd go on, 'when I dreamed of marryin' a red-cross knight!' 'I have my higher moments, Artemisia,' I'd say, half in joke; 'Why not try shutting your eyes?' But afterwards, when that splendid woman was gone for ever, and my daughter Heeb (which is a classical name given her by her mother) comfortably married to a wholesale glover, and me left at home a solitary grandfather—which, proud as you may be of it, is a slight occupation—I began to think things over and find there was more in my poor wife's notions than I'd ever allowed. And the upshot was that seeing this advertisement by chance in a copy of the Sherborne Messenger, I determined to shut up shop and let Axminster think I was gone on a holiday, while I gave it a trial; for, you see, I was not altogether sure of myself."

"Excuse me, Badcock," interrupted Mr. Fett, advancing towards him with outstretched arms; "but have you perused the books of chivalry, or is this the pure light of nature?"

"Books, sir?" answered Mr. Badcock, seriously. "I never knew there were any books about it. I never heard of tchivalry except from my late wife; and you'll excuse the force of habit, but she pronounced it the same as in chibbles."

"You never read of the meeting of Amadis and Sir Galaor?"

Mr. Badcock shook his head.

"Nor of Percival and Galahad, nor of Sir Balin and Sir Balan? No? Then embrace me!"

"Sir?"

"Embrace me!"

"Sit down, the pair of you," my father commanded. "I have a proposal to make, which, if I mistake not, will interest you both. Mr. Badcock, I have heard your aspirations, and can fulfil them in a degree that will surprise you. I like you, Mr. Badcock."

"The feeling, sir, is mutchual." Mr. Badcock bowed with much amiability.

"Is time an object with you?"

"None whatever, sir. I am on a holiday."

"Will you be my guest to-night?"

"With the more pleasure, sir, after my experience of the inns in these parts. Though I may have presented her to you in a somewhat romantic light, my Artemisia did know how to make a bed; and twenty-two years of her ministrations, not to mention her companionship, have coddled me in this particular."

"And you, sir"—my father turned to Mr. Fett—"will you accompany us?"

"With what ulterior object?" demanded Mr. Fett. "You will excuse my speaking as a business man, and overlook the damned bad manners of the question for the sake of its pertinence."

My father smiled. "Why, sir, I was proposing to invite you to a sea voyage with me."

"There was a time, before commerce claimed me, when the mere hint of a nautical expedition had evoked an emotion which, if it survive at all, lingers but as in a sea-shell the whisper of the parent ocean."

"As a supercargo, at four shillings per diem," suggested my father.

"Say no more, sir; I am yours."

"As for Mr. Fiennes—nay, lad, I remember you well." My father turned to him with that sweet courtesy which few ever resisted. "And blush not, lad, if I guess that to you we all owe this meeting; 'twere a bravery well beseeming your blood. As for Mr. Fiennes, he will accompany us in heart if he cannot in presence—being, as I understand, destined for the law?"

"Why, sir, as for that," stammered Nat, "I have had the devil's own dispute with my father."

"You treated him with all respect, I hope?"

"With all the respect in the world, sir. But it scarcely matters, since he has cast me off, and without a penny."

"Why, then, you can come too!" cried my father, gripping him by the hand. "Bravo, Prosper! that makes five; and with Billy Priske, when we can find him, six; and that leaves but one to find before dinner-time." He pulled out his watch. "Lord!" he cried, "and 'tis high time to feel hungry, too. If this lady now will repeat her hospitable offer—"

I thought at the moment, and I thought once or twice during the meal downstairs, that my father was taxing this poor woman's hospitality. I doubted that he, himself so carelessly hospitable, might forget to offer her payment; and lingered after the others had trooped into the passage, with purpose to remind him privately.

"Come," said he, and made a notion to leave, still without offering to pay. On the threshold I had almost turned to whisper to him when the woman came after and touched his arm.

"Nay, Sir John," said she, eagerly, in a low hoarse voice, "let the lad hear me thank you. He is old enough to understand and clean enough to profit. Shut the door, child. You know me, Sir John?"

My father bent his head. "I never forget a face," said he, quietly.

"Take notice of that, boy. Your father remembers me, whom to my knowledge he never saw but once, and then as a magistrate, when he sat to judge me. Never mind the offence, lad. I am a sinful woman, and the punishment was—"

"Nay, nay!" put in my father, gently.

"The punishment was," she continued, hardening her voice, "to strip me to the waist and whip me in public. The law allowed this, and this they would have done to me. But your father, being chairman of the bench—for the offence lay outside the borough—would have none of it, and argued and forced three other magistrates to give way. Little good he did, you may say, seeing that my name is such in Falmouth that, only by entering my door, the Mayor just now did what all his cleverness could never have done—stopped a riot by a silly brutal laugh—the chief magistrate taking shelter with Moll Whiteaway! You can't get below that for fun, as the folk will take it; and yet I say your father did good, for he saved me from the worst. And to-day of his goodness he has not remembered my sins, but treated me as though they were not; and today, as only a good man can, he goes from my house, no man thinking to laugh except at his simplicity, even though it were known that I kissed his hand. God bless you, Sir John, and teach your son to be merciful to women!"

My father was ever so shy of his own kind actions that, when detected by chance or painfully tracked out in one, he kept always a quotation ready to justify what pure impulse had prompted. So now, as we hurried across the deserted Market Strand to catch up with the other three, he must needs brazen things out with the authority of Bishop Jeremy Taylor.

"It was a maxim of that excellent divine," said he, "that Christian censure should never be used to make a sinner desperate; for then he either sinks under the burden or grows impudent and tramples upon it. A charitable modest remedy, says he, preserves that which is virtue's girdle-fear and blushing. Honour, dear lad, is the peculiar counsellor of well-bred natures, and these are few; but almost in all men you will find a certain modesty toward sin, and were I a king my judges should be warned that their duty is to chasten; whereas by punishing immoderately they can but effect the exact opposite."

We found our trio waiting for us on the far side of the square; and, having fetched our horses and left an order at the inn for Billy Priske on his return to mount and follow us, wended our way out of the town. The streets on this side were deserted and mournful, the shopkeepers having fastened their shutters for fear of the mob, of whose present doings no sound reached us but a faint murmuring hubbub borne on the afternoon air from the northward—that is, from the direction of the Green Bank and the Penryn Road.

My father led the way at a foot's pace, and seemed to ride pondering, for his chin was sunk on his chest and he had pulled his hat-brim well over his eyes (but this may have been against the July sun). After him tramped Mr. Fett in eager converse with the little pawnbroker, now questioning him, now halting to regard him, as a man who has dug up a sudden treasure and for the moment can only gaze at it and hug himself. Nat and I brought up the rear, he striding at my stirrup and pouring forth the tale of his adventures since we parted. A dozen times he rehearsed the scene of the parental quarrel, and interrupted each rehearsal with a dozen anxious questions. "Ought he to have given this answer?—to have uttered that defiance? Did I think he had shown self-control; Had he treated the old gentleman with becoming respect? Would I put myself in his place? Suppose it had been my own father, now—"

"But yours, lad, is a father in a thousand," he broke off bitterly. "I had never a notion that father and son could be friends, as are you and he. He is splendid—splendid!"

I glanced at him quickly and turned my face aside, suspecting that he took my father for a madman, and was kindly concealing the discovery. Nevertheless I hardened my voice to answer—

"You will say so when you know him better. And my Uncle Gervase runs him a good second."

"Faith, then, I wish you'd persuade your uncle to adopt me. I'm not envious, Prosper, in a general way, but your luck gives me a duced orphanly feeling. Have I been over-hasty? That is the question; whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of accusing conscience or to up and have it out with the old man."

"Pardon me, gentlemen"—Mr. Fett wheeled about suddenly on the road ahead of us—"but it was by accident that I overheard you, and by a singular coincidence at that moment I happened to be discussing the same subject with Mr. Badcock here."

"What subject?"

"Missiles, sir. It appears that, when his blood is up, Mr. Badcock finds himself absolutely careless of missiles. He declares that, with a sense of smell as acute as most men's, he was unaware to-day of having been struck with a rotten egg until I, at ten paces' distance, drew his attention to it. Now, that is a degree of courage—insensibility—call it what you will—to which I make no pretence. The cut and thrust, gentlemen, the couched lance, even, within limits, the battering ram, would have, I feel confident, comparatively few terrors for me. But missiles I abominate. Drawing, as I am bound to do, my anticipations of the tented field from experience gathered—I say it literally, gathered—before the footlights, I confess to some sympathy with the gentleman who assured Harry Percy that but for these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier. You will not misunderstand me. I believe on my faith that as a military man I was born out of my time. The scythed chariots of Boadicea, for instance, must have been damned inconvenient; yet I can conceive myself jumping 'em. But a stone, as I learnt in my boyhood—a stone, sirs, and a fortiori a bullet—"

"Hist!" broke in my father, at the same moment reining up. "Prosper, what do you make of that noise, up yonder?"

I listened. "It sounds to me like a heavy cart—"

"Or a waggon. To my hearing there are two horses."

"And runaway ones, by the shouting."

We had reached a point of the road, not far from home, where a steep lane cut across it: a track seldom used but scored with old ruts, sunk between hedges full sixteen feet high, leading down from a back gate of Constantine and a deserted lodge to a quay by the waterside. Not once in three months, within my remembrance, did cart or waggon pass along this lane, which indeed grew a fine crop of grass and docks between the ruts.

"Nay," said my father, after a few seconds, "I gave you a false alarm, gentlemen. The shouting, whatever it means, is over. Your pardon, Mr. Fett, that I interrupted you."

"Sir," said Mr. Fett, stepping put him to reconnoitre the lane, "I was but remarking what a number of the wise have observed before me, that a stone which has left the hand is in the hands of the dev—"

He ducked his head with a cry as a stone whizzed past him and within a foot of it. On the instant the loud rattle and thunder of cartwheels broke forth again, and now but a short distance up the lane; also a voice almost as loudly vociferating; and, almost before Mr. Fett could run back to us, a whole volley of stones flew hurtling across the road.

"Hi, there! Halt!" My father struck spur and rode forward, in time to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart. "Confound you, sir! What the devil d'you mean by flinging stones in this manner across the middle of the King's highway."

The man—he was one of the seamen of the Gauntlet—stood up in the cart upon a load of stones and grinned. In one hand he gripped the reins, in the other a fistful of flints.

"Your honour's pardon," said he, lifting his forearm and drawing the back of it across his dripping brow, "but the grey mare for'rad won't pull, and the whip here won't reach her. I couldn't think upon no better way."

"You mean to tell me you have been pelting that poor brute all down the lane?"

"I couldn't think upon no better way," the seaman repeated wistfully, almost plaintively. "She's what you might call sensitive to stones."

"Intelligent beast!" commented Mr. Fett. "And I bought that mare only six months ago!" (In truth my father had found the poor creature wandering the roads and starving, cast off by her owner as past work, and had purchased her out of mere humanity for thirty shillings.)

"But what business have you to be driving my cart and horses?" he demanded. "And what's the meaning of these stones you're carting?"

"Ballast, your honour."

"Ballast?"

"I don't know how much of it'll ever arrive at this rate," confessed the seaman, dropping the handful of flints and scratching his head. "Tis buying speed at a terrible cost of jettison. But Cap'n Pomery's last order to me was to make haste about it, if we're to catch to-morrow's tide."

"Captain Pomery sent you for these stones?"

"Why, Lord love your honour, a vessel can't discharge two dozen Papist monks and cattle and implements to correspond without wantin' something in their place. Nice flat stones, too, the larger-sized be, and not liable to shift in a sea-way."

But here another strange noise drew our eyes up the lane, as an old man in a smock-frock—a pensioner of the estate, and by name John Worthyvale—came hobbling round the corner and down the hill towards us, using his long-handled road hammer for a staff and uttering shrill tremulous cries of rage.

"Vengeance, Sir John! Vengeance for my l'il heap o' stones!"

"Why, Worthyvale, what's the matter?" asked my father, soothingly.

"My l'il heap o' stones, Sir John; my poor l'il heap o' stones! What's to become o' me, master? Where will your kindness find a bellyful for me, if these murderin' seamen take away my l'il heap o' stones?"

My father laid a hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Captain Pomery wants them for ballast, Worthyvale. You understand? It appears he can find none so suitable.''

"No, I don't understand!" exclaimed the old fellow, fiercely. "This has been a black week for me, Sir John. First of all my darter's youngest darter comes and tells me she've picked up with a man. Seems 'twas only last year she was runnin' about in short frocks; but, dang it! the time must ha' slipped away somehow whilst I've a-sat hammerin' stones, an' now there'll be no person left to mind me. Next news, I hear from Master Gervase that you be goin' foreign, Sir John, with Master Prosper here. The world gets that empty, I wish I were dead, I do. An' now they've a-took my l'il heap o' stones!"

"And this old man's sires," said my father to me, but so that he did not hear, "held land in Domesday Book—twelve virgates of land with close on forty carucates of arable, villeins and borderers and bondservants, six acres of wood, a hundred and twenty of pasture; and he makes his last stand on this heap of stones. Ballast?" He turned to the seaman. "Did I not tell Captain Pomery to ballast with wine?"

"We were carrying it all the forenoon," the seaman answered. "There was two hogsheads of claret."

"And the hogshead of Madeira, with what remained of the brown sherry? Likewise in bottles twelve dozen of the Hermitage and as much again of the Pope's wine, of Avignon?"

"It all went in, sir. Master Gervase checked it on board by the list."

"For the rest we are reduced to stones? Then, Prosper, there remains no other course open to us."

"Than what, sir?" I asked.

"We must enlist this old man; and that fulfils our number."

"Old John Worthyvale?"

"Why not? He can sit in the hold and crack stones until I devise his part in the campaign. Say no more. I have an inkling he will prove not the least useful man of our company."

"As to that, sir," I answered, with a shrug of the shoulders and a glance at Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock, "I don't feel able to contradict you."

"Then here we are assembled," said my father, cheerfully, with the air of one closing a discussion; "the more by token that here comes Billy Priske. Why, man," he asked, as Billy rode up—but so dejectedly that his horse seemed to droop its ears in sympathy— "what ails you? Not wounded, are you?"

"Worse," answered Billy, and groaned.

"We were told you got quit of the crowd.

"So I did," said Billy. "Damn it!"

"They followed you?" I asked.

"No, they didn't, and I wish they had."

"Then what on earth has happened?"

"What has happened?" Having no hair of his own to speak of, Billy reached forward and ran his fingers through his horse's mane. "I've engaged to get married. That's what has happened."

"Good Lord!"

"To a female Methody, in a Quaker bonnet. I had no idea of any such thing when I followed her. She was sittin' on the first milestone out of Falmouth and jabbin' her heel into the dust, like a person in a pet. First of all, when I spoke to her, she wouldn't tell what had annoyed her; but later on it turned out she had come expectin' to be made a martyr of, and everything was lookin' keenly that way until Sir John came and interfered, as she put it."

"And she said," suggested Mr. Fett, "that she didn't mind what man could do unto her?"

"The very words she used, sir!" said Billy, his brow clearing as a prisoner's will when counsel supplies him with a defence.

"And, when you took her at her word, like a Christian woman she turned the other cheek?"

"She did, sir, and no harm meant; but just doing it gay, as a man will."

"But when you explained this, she wouldn't take no for an answer?"

"She would not, sir. She seemed not to understand. Then I looked at her bonnet and, a thought striking me, I tried 'nay' instead. But that didn't work no better than the other. If you could hide me for tonight, Sir John—"

"You had best sleep on the Gauntlet to-night," said my father. "If the woman calls, I will have a talk with her. What is her name, by the way?"

"Martha."

"But I mean her full name."

"I didn't get so far as to inquire, Sir John. But the point is, she knows mine."



CHAPTER X.

OF THE DISCOURSE HELD ON BOARD THE "GAUNTLET."

"The Pilot assured us that, considering the Gentleness of the Winds and their pleasant Contentions, as also the Clearness of the Atmosphere and the Calm of the Current, we stood neither in Hope of much Good nor in Fear of much Harm . . . and advised us to let the Ship drive, nor busy ourselves with anything but making good Cheer." —The Fifth Book of the Good Pantagruel.

It appeared that, unknown to me, my father had already made his arrangements with Captain Pomery, and we were to sail with the morning's tide. During supper—which Billy Priske had no sooner laid than he withdrew to collect his kit and carry it down to the ship, taking old Worthyvale for company—our good Vicar arrived, as well to bid us good-bye as in some curiosity to learn what recruits we had picked up in Falmouth. I think the sight of them impressed him; but at the tale of our day's adventures, and especially when he heard of our championing the Methodists, his hands went up in horror.

"The Methodists!" For two years past the Vicar had occupied a part of his leisure in writing a pamphlet against them: and by "leisure" I mean all such days as were either too inclement for fishing, or thunderous so that the trout would not rise.

"My dear friend, while you have been sharpening the sword of Saint Athanasius against 'em, the rabble has been beforehand with you and given 'em bloody noses. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of heresy—if you call the Wesleyans heretics—as well as of the Church."

The Vicar sighed. "I have been slack of pace and feeble of will. Yes, yes, I deserve the reproach."

My father laid a hand on his shoulder. "Tut, tut! Cannot you see that I was not reproaching, but rather daring to commend you for an exemplar? There is a slackness which comes of weak will; but there is another and a very noble slackness which proceeds from the two strongest things on earth, confidence and charity; charity, which naturally inclines to be long-suffering, and confidence which, having assurance in its cause, dares to trust that natural inclination. Dissent in the first generation is usually admirable and almost always respectable: men don't leave the Church for fun, but because they have thought and discovered, as they believe, something amiss in her—something which in nine cases out of ten she would be the better for considering. But dissent in the second and third generation usually rests on bad temper, which is not admirable at all, though often excusable because the Church's persecution has produced it. Believe me, my dear Vicar, that if all the bishops followed your example and slept on their wrath against heresy, they would wake up and find nine-tenths of the heretics back in the fold. Indeed I wish your good lady would let you pack your nightcap and come with us. You could hire a curate over from Falmouth."

"Could I write my pamphlet at sea?"

"No: but, better still, by the time you returned the necessity for it would be over."

The Vicar smiled. "You counsel lethargy?—you, who in an hour or two start for Corsica, and with no more to-do than if bound on a picnic!"

"Ay, but for love," answered my father. "In love no man can be too prompt."

"I believe you, sir," hiccuped Mr. Fett, who had been drinking more than was good for him. "And so, begad, does your man Priske. Did any one mark, just now, how like a shooting star he glided in the night from Venus' eye? Love, sir?" he turned to me. "The tender passion? Is that our little game? Is that the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? O Troy! O Helen! You'll permit me to add, with a glance at our friend Priske's predicament, O Dido! At five shillings per diem I realize the twin ambitions of a life-time and combine the supercargo with the buck. Well, well! cherchez la femme!"

"You pronounce it 'share-shay?'" inquired Mr. Badcock. "Now I have seen it spelt the same as in 'church.'"

"The same as in ch—?" Mr. Fett fixed him with a glassy but reproachful eye. "Badcock, you are premature, premature and indelicate."

Here my father interposed and, heading the talk back to the Methodists, soon had the Vicar and the little pawnbroker in full cry—parson and clerk antiphonal, "matched in mouth like bells"—on church discipline; which gave him opportunity, while Nat and I at our end of the table exchanged the converse and silences of friendship, to confer with my Uncle Gervase and run over a score of parting instructions on the management of the estate, the ordering of the household, and, in particular, the entertainment of our Trappist guests. Perceiving with the corner of his eye that we two were restless to leave the table, he pushed the bottle towards us.

"My lads," said he, "when the drinking tires let the talk no longer detain you."

We thanked him, and with a glance at Mr. Fett—who had fallen asleep with his head on his arms—stepped out upon the moonlit terrace. I waited for Nat to speak and give me a chance to have it out with him, if he doubted (as he must, methought) my father's sanity. But he gazed over the park at our feet, the rolling shadows of the woodland, the far estuary where one moonray trembled, and stretching out both hands drew the spiced night-air into his lungs with a sob.

"O Prosper!"

"You are wondering where to find your room?" said I, as he turned and glanced up at the grey glimmering facade. "The simplest way is to pick up the first lantern you see in the hall, light it, walk upstairs, enter what room you choose and take possession of its bed. You have five hours to sleep, if you need sleep. Or shall I guide you?"

"No," said he; "the first is the only way in this enchanted house. But I was thinking that by rights, while we are standing here, those windows should blaze with lights and break forth with the noise of dancing and minstrelsy. To such a castle, high against such a velvet night as this, would Sir Lancelot come, or Sir Gawain, or Sir Perceval, at the close of a hard day."

"Wait for the dawn, lad, and you will find it rather the castle overgrown with briers."

"And, in the heart of them, the Rose!"

"You will find no Sleeping Beauty, though you hunt through all its rooms. She lies yonder, Nat, somewhere out beyond the sea there."

"In a few hours we sail to her. O Prosper, and we will find her! This is better than any dream, lad: and this is life!"

He gazed into my eyes for a moment in the moonlight, turned on his heel, and strode away from me toward the great door, which—like every door in the house—stood wide all the summer night. I was staring at the shadow of the porch into which he had disappeared, when my father touched my elbow.

"There goes a good lad," said he, quietly.

"And my best friend."

"He has sobered down strangely from the urchin I remember on Winchester meads; and in the sobering he has grown exalted. A man might almost say," mused my father, "that the imp in him had shed itself off and taken flesh in that Master Fett I left snoring with his head on my dining-table. An earthy spirit, that Master Fett; earthy and yet somewhat inhuman. Your Nat Fiennes has the clue of life—if only Atropos do not slit it."

Here the Vicar came out to take his leave, winding about his neck and throat the comforter he always wore as a protective against the night-air. It appeared later that he was nettled by Mr. Badcock's collapsing beneath the table just as they had reached No. XX. of the Thirty-nine Articles and passed it through committee by consent.

"God bless you, lad!" said he, and shook my hand. "In seeking your kingdom you start some way ahead of Saul the son of Kish. You have already discovered your father's asses."

He trudged away across the dewy park and was soon lost in the darkness. In the dim haze under the moon, having packed Mr. Badcock and Mr. Fett in a hand-cart, we trundled them down to the shore and lifted them aboard. They resisted not, nor stirred.

By three o'clock our dispositions were made and Captain Pomery professed himself ready to cast off. I returned to the house for the last time, to awake and fetch Nat Fiennes. As I crossed the wet sward the day broke and a lark sprang from the bracken and soared above me singing. But I went hanging my head, heavy with lack of sleep.

I tried five rooms and found them empty. In the sixth Nat lay stretched upon a tattered silk coverlet. He sprang up at my touch and felt for his sword.

"Past three o'clock and fine clear mornin'!" sang I, mimicking the Oxford watch, and with my foot the tap of his staff as he had used to pass along Holy well.

"Hey! now the day dawis, The jolly cock crawis—"

"The wind will head us in the upper reach: but beyond it blows fair for Corsica!"

He leapt to his feet and laughed, blithe as the larks now chorussing outside the window. But my head was heavy, and somehow my heart too, as we walked down to the shore.

My Uncle Gervase stood on the grass-grown quay; my father on the deck. They had already said their goodbyes. With his right hand my uncle took mine, at the same time laying his left on my shoulder; and said he—

"Farewell, lad. The rivers in Corsica be short and eager, as I hear; and slight fishing in them near the coast, the banks being overgrown. But it seems there are good trout, and in the mountain pools.

"Whether they be the same as our British trout I cannot discover. I desire you to make certain. Also if the sardines of those parts be the same as our Cornish pilchards, but smaller. Belike they start from the Mediterranean Sea and reach their full size on our coasts.

"The migrations of fishes are even less understood than those of the birds. Yet both (being annual) will teach you, if you consider them, to think little of this parting. God knows, lad, how sorely I spare you.

"Do justice, observe mercy, and walk humbly before thy God. This if they should happen to make you king, as your father promises.

"They have an animal very like a sheep, but wilder and fiercer. If you have the luck to shoot one, I shall be glad of his skin.

"'Twill be a job here, making two ends meet. But as our Lord said, Sufficient for the day is its evil. I have put a bottle of tar-water in your berth.

"I have often wished to set eyes on the Mediterranean Sea. A sea without tides must be but half a sea—speaking with all respect to the Almighty, who made it.

"You will pick up the wind in the lower reach.

"There was a trick or two of fence I taught you aforetime. I had meant to remind you of 'em. But enough, lad. Shake hands. . . . The Lord have you in His keeping!"

Good man! For a long while after we had thrust off from the quay, the two seamen in the cock-boat towing us, he stood there and waved farewells; but turned before we reached the river bend, and went his way up through the woods—since in Cornwall it is held unlucky to watch departing friends clean out of sight.

Almost at once I went below in search of my hammock, and there slept ten solid hours by the clock; a feat of which I never witted until, coming upon deck, I rubbed my eyes to find no sight of land, but the sea all around us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a game of chequers: and without disturbing them I stepped amidships where Mr. Fett lay prone on his belly, his chin propped on both hands, in discourse with Billy and Mr. Badcock, who reclined with their backs against the starboard bulwark.

"Tut, man!" said Mr. Fett, cheerfully, addressing Billy. "You have taken the right classical way with her: think of Theseus and Ariadne, Phaon and Sappho. . . . We are back in the world's first best age; when a man, if he wanted a woman to wife, sailed in a ship and abducted her, as did the Tyrian sea-captain with Io daughter of Inachus, Jason with Medea, Paris with Helen of Greece; and again, when he tired of her, left her on an island and sailed away. There was Sappho, now; she ran and cast herself off a rock. And Medea, she murdered her children in revenge. But we are over hasty, to talk of children."

Billy groaned aloud, "I meant no harm to the woman."

"Nor did these heroes. As I was saying, on board this ship I find myself back in the world's dawn, ready for any marvels, but responsible (there's the beauty of it) only to my ledger. As supercargo I sit careless as a god on Olympus. My pen is trimmed, my ink-pot filled, and my ledger ruled and prepared for miracles. Item, a Golden Fleece. Item, A king's runaway daughter, slightly damaged:

"Whatever befel the good ship Argo It didn't affect the supercargo,"

who whistled and sat composing blank verse, having discovered that Jason rhymed most unheroically with bason:

"Neglecting the daughter of Aeson Sat Jason, a bason his knees on—"

"You don't help a man much, sir, so far as I understand you," grumbled Billy, with a nervous glance around the horizon.

"Well, then I'll prescribe you another way. Nobody believes me when I tell the following story: but 'tis true nevertheless. So listen—

MR. FETT'S STORY OF THE INTERRUPTED BETROTHAL.

"To the south of the famous city of Oxford, between it and the town of Abingdon, lies a neat covert called Bagley Wood: in the which, on a Sunday evening a bare two months ago, I chose to wander with my stage copy of Mr. Otway's Orphan—a silly null play, sirs, if not altogether the nonsense for which Abingdon, two nights later, condemned it. While I wandered amid the undergrowth, conning my part, my attention was arrested by a female voice on the summer breeze, most pitiably entreating for help. I closed my book and bent my steps in the direction of the outcries. Judge of my amazement when, parting the bushes in a secluded glade, I came upon a distressed but not uncomely maiden, buried up to her neck in earth beneath the spreading boughs of a beech. To exhume and release her cost me, unprovided as I was with any tool for the purpose, no little labour. At length, however, I disengaged her and was rewarded with her story; which ran, that a faithless swain, having decoyed her into the recesses of the wood, had pushed her into a pit prepared by him; and that but for the double accident of having miscalculated her inches and being startled by my recitations of Otway into a terror that the whole countryside was after him with hue and cry, he had undoubtedly consummated his fell design. After cautioning her to be more careful in future I parted from the damsel (who to the last protested her gratitude) and walked homeward to my lodgings, on the way reflecting how frail a thing is woman when matched against man the libertine."

Billy Priske's eyes had grown round in his head. Mr. Badcock, after sitting in thought for a full minute, observed that the incident was peculiar in many respects.

"Is that the end of the yarn?" I asked.

"I never met the lady again," confessed Mr. Fett. "As for the story," he added with a sigh, "I am accustomed to have it disbelieved. Yet let me tell you this. On my return I related it to the company, who received it with various degrees of incredulity—all but a youthful stroller who had joined us at Banbury and earned promotion, on the strength of his looks, from 'walking gentleman' to what is known in the profession as 'first lover.' On the strength of this, again, he had somewhat hastily aspired to the hand of our leading tragedy lady—a mature person, who knew her own mind. My narrative seemed to dispel the atmosphere of gloom which had hung about him for some days; and the next morning, having promised to accompany his betrothed on a stroll up the river bank, he left the inn with a light, almost jaunty, tread. From the balcony I watched them out of sight. By-and-by, however, I spied a figure returning alone by the towpath; and, concealing myself, heard young Romeo in the courtyard carelessly demanding of the ostler the loan of a spade. From behind my curtain I watched him as again he made his way up the shore with the implement tucked under his arm. I waited in a terrible suspense. Each minute seemed an hour. A thunderstorm happening to break over the river at this juncture (as such things do), the scene lacked no appropriate accessory. At length, between two flashes of lightning, I perceived in the distance my two turtles returning, and gave voice to my relief. They were walking side by side, but no longer arm-in-arm. Young Romeo hung his head dejectedly: and on a closer view the lady's garments not only dripped with the storm but showed traces of earth to the waist. The rest they kept to themselves. I say no more, save that after the evening's performance (of 'All for Love') young Romeo came to me and announced that his betrothal was at an end. They had discovered (as he put it) some incompatibility of temper."

My father and Nat Fiennes had finished their game and come forward in time to hear the conclusion of this amazing narrative. Billy Priske stared at his master in bewilderment.

"A spade!" growled Billy, mopping his brow and letting his gaze travel around the horizon again before settling, in dull wrath, on Mr. Fett. "What's the use, sir, of makin' a man feel like a villain and putting thoughts into his head without means to fulfil 'em?"

"Sit you quiet," said my father, "while I try to drive Mr. Fett's story out of your head with an honester one."

"About a spade, master?"

"There is a spade in the story."

MY FATHER'S STORY OF THE SHIPWRECKED LOVERS.

"In the year 1416 a certain Portuguese sea-captain, Gonsalvez Zarco by name, and servant of the famous Henry of Portugal, was cruising homeward in a leaky caravel from a baffled voyage in search of the Fortunate Islands. He had run into a fog off Cape Blanco in Africa, and had been pushing through it for two days when the weather lifted and the look-out spied a boat, empty but for one man, drifting a mile and more to leeward. Zarco ran down for the boat, and the man, being brought aboard, was found to be an escaped Moorish prisoner on his way back to Spain. He gave his name as Morales, and said that he had sometime been a pilot of Seville, but being captured by the Moors off Algeciras, had spent close on twenty years in servitude to them. In the end he and six other Christians had escaped in a boat of their own making, but with few victuals. When these were consumed his companions had perished one by one, horribly, and he had been sailing without hope, not caring whither, for a day and a night before his rescue came.

"Now this much he told them painfully, being faint with fasting and light-headed: but afterwards falling into a delirium, he let slip certain words that caused Captain Zarco to bestow him in a cabin apart and keep watch over him until the ship reached Lagos, whence he conveyed him secretly and by night to Prince Henry, who dwelt at that time in an arsenal of his own building, on the headland of Sagres. There Prince Henry questioned him, and the old man, taken by surprise, told them a story both true and wonderful.

"In his captivity he had made friends with a fellow prisoner, an Englishman named Prince or Prance (since dead, after no less than thirty years of servitude), who had fallen among the Moors in the manner following. In his youth he had been a seaman, and one day in the year 1370 he was standing idle on Bristol Quay when a young squire accosted him and offered to hire him for a voyage to France, naming a good wage and pressing no small share of it upon him as earnest money. The ship (he said, naming her) lay below at Avonmouth and would sail that same night. Prince knew the ship and her master, and judged from the young squire's apparel and bearing that here was one of those voluntary expeditions by which our young nobles made it a fashion to seek fame at the expense of our enemies the French; a venture dangerous indeed but carrying a hopeful chance of high profits. He agreed, therefore, and joined the ship a little after nightfall. Toward midnight arrived a boat with our young squire and one companion, a lady of extreme beauty, who had no sooner climbed the ship's side than the master cut the anchor-cable and stood out for sea.

"The names of these pretty runaways were Robert Machin and Anne d'Arfet, wife of a sour merchant of Bristol; and all their care was to flee together and lose all the world for love. But they never reached France; for having run prosperously down Channel and across from the Land's End until they sighted Ushant, they met a north-easterly gale which blew them off the coast; a gale so blind and terrible and persistent that for twelve days they ran before it, in peril of death. On the thirteenth day they sighted an island, where, having found (as they thought) good anchorage, they brought the ship to, and rowed the lady ashore through the surf. Between suffering and terror she was already close upon death.

"Now this man Prince said that 'though the seamen laid their peril at her door, holding the monstrous storm to be a judgment direct from Heaven upon her sin, yet not one of them, considering her childish beauty, had the heart to throw her an ill word or so much as an accusing look: but having borne her ashore they built a tabernacle of boughs and roofed it with a spare sail for her and for her lover, who watched beside her till she died.

"On the morning of her death the seamen, who slept on the beach at a little distance, were awakened by a terrible cry: whereat, gazing seaward—as a seaman's first impulse is—they missed all sight of their ship. Either the gale, reviving, had parted her moorings and blown her out to sea, or else the two or three left on board her treacherously slipped her cable. At all events, no more was ever heard of her.

"The seamen supposed then that Master Machin had called out for the loss of the ship. But coming to him they found him staring at the poor corpse of his lady; and when they pointed to sea he appeared to mark not their meaning. Only he said many times, 'Is she gone? Is she gone?' Whether he spoke of the ship or of the lady they could not tell. Thereafter he said nothing, but turned his face away from all offers of food, and on the fifth day the seaman buried him beside his mistress and set up a wooden cross at their heads.

"After this (said Prince), finding no trace of habitation on the island, and being convinced that no ship ever passed within sight of it, the seamen caught and killed four of the sheep which ran wild upon the cliffs, and with the flesh of them provisioned the boat in which they had come ashore, and took their leave. For eleven days they steered as nearly due east as they could—that being the quarter in which they supposed the mainland to lie, until a gale overtook them, and, drowning the rest, cast four of them alive on the coast near Mogador, where the Moors fell on them and sold them into slavery, to masters living wide apart. Yet, and howsoever the others perished, in the mouth of this one man the story lived and came after many days to ears that understood it.

"For Prince Henry, hearing the pilot's tale, believed verily that this must be the island for which his sea-captains had been searching, and in 1420 sent Zarco forth again to seek it, with the old man on board. They reached Porto Santo, where they heard of a dark line visible in all clear weather on the southern horizon, and sailing for it through the fogs, came to a marshy cape, and beyond this cape to high wooded land which Morales recognized at once from his fellow-prisoner's description. Yes, and bringing them to shore he led them, unerring, to the wooden cross above the beach; and there, over the grave of these lovers, Zarco took seizin of the island in the name of King John of Portugal, Prince Henry, and the Order of Christ.

"From this," my father concluded, "we may learn, first, that human passion, of all things the most transient, may be stronger and more enduring than death; of all things the unruliest and most deserving to be chastened, it may rise naked from the scourge to claim the homage of all men; nay, that this mire in which the multitude wallows may on an instant lift up a brow of snow and challenge the Divinity Himself, saying, 'We are of one essence, Shall not I too work miracles?' Secondly—"

"Your pardon, master," put in Billy, "but in all the fine speeches about Love and War and suchlike that I've heard you read out of books afore now, I could never make out what use they be to common fellows like myself. Say 'tis a battle: you start us off with a shout, which again starts off our betters a-knocking together other folks' heads and their own: but afterwards, when I'm waiting and wondering what became of Billy Priske, all the upshot is that some thousand were slaughtered and maybe enough to set some river running with blood. Likewise with these seamen, that never ran off with their neighbours' wives, but behaved pretty creditable under the circumstances, which didn't prevent their being spilt out of boats and eaten by fishes or cast ashore and barbecued by heathen Turks—a pretty thing this Love did for them, I say. And so to come to my own case, which is where this talk started, I desire with all respect, master, that you will first ease my mind of this question—be I in love, or bain't I?"

"Surely, man, you must know that?"

Billy shook his head. "I've what you might call a feeling t'wards the woman: and yet not rightly what you might call a feeling, nor yet azactly, as you might say, t'wards her. And it can't be so strong as I reckoned, for when she spoke the word 'marriage' you might ha' knocked me down with a straw."

"Eh?" put in Mr. Fett, "was she the first to mention it?"

"Me bein' a trifle absent-minded, maybe, on that point," explained Billy. His gaze happening to wander to the wheel, encountered Captain Jo Pomery's; and Captain Jo, who had been listening, nodded encouragement.

"Speakin' as a seafarin' man and the husband o' three at one time and another," said he, "they always do so."

"My Artemisia," said Mr. Badcock, "was no exception; though a powerful woman and well able to look after herself."

"'Tis their privilege," agreed Captain Pomery. "You must allow 'em a few."

"But contrariwise," Billy resumed, "it must be stronger than I reckoned, for here I be safe, as you may say, and here I should be grateful; whereas I bain't, and, what's more, my appetite's failin'. Be you goin' to give me something for it?" he asked, as Mr. Badcock dived a hand suddenly into a tail pocket and drew forth what at first appeared to be the neck of a bottle, but to closer view revealed itself as the upper half of a flute. A second dive produced the remainder.

"Good Lord! Badcock has another accomplishment!" ejaculated Mr. Fett.

"The gift of music," said Mr. Badcock, screwing the two portions of the instrument together, "is born in some. The great Batch—John Sebastian Batch, gentlemen—as I am credibly informed, composed a fugue in his bed at the tender age of four."

"He was old enough to have given his nurse warning," said Mr. Fett.

"With me," pursued Mr. Badcock, modestly, "it has been the result of later and (I will not conceal the truth, sirs) more assiduous cultivation. This instrument"—he tapped it affectionately—"came to me in the ordinary way of trade and lay unredeemed in my shop for no less than eight years; nor when exposed for sale could it tempt a purchaser. 'You must do something with it,' said my Artemisia—an excellent housewife, gentlemen, who wasted nothing if she could help it. I remember her giving me the same advice about an astrolabe, and again about a sun-dial corrected for the meridian of Bury St. Edmunds. 'My dear,' I answered, 'there is but one thing to be done with a flute, and that is to learn it.' In this way I discovered what I will go no further than to describe as my Bent."

Mr. Badcock put the flute to his lips and blew into it. A tune resulted.

"But," persisted Billy Priske, after a dozen bars or so, "the latest thing to be mentioned was my appetite: and 'tis wonderful to me how you gentlemen are letting the conversation stray, this afternoon."

"The worst of a flute," said Mr. Badcock, withdrawing it from his lips with obvious reluctance, "and the objection commonly urged by its detractors, is that a man cannot blow upon it and sing at the same time."

"I don't say," said Billy, seriously, "as that mayn't be a reas'nable objection; only it didn't happen to be mine."

"You have heard the tune," said Mr. Badcock. "Now for the words—

"I attempt from love's sickness to fly, in vain, Since I am myself my own fever and pain."

"Bravo!" my father cried. "Mr. Badcock has hit it. You are in love, Billy, and beyond a doubt."

"Be I?" said Billy, scratching his head. "Well, as the saying is, many an ass has entered Jerusalem."



CHAPTER XI.

WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.

"We laid them aboard the larboard side— With hey! with ho! for and a nonny no! And we threw them into the sea so wide, And alongst the Coast of Barbary." The Sailor's Onely Delight.

My father, checked in the midst, or rather at the outset, of a panegyric upon love, could not rest until he had found an ear into which to deliver it; but that same evening, after the moon had risen, drew Nat aside on the poop, and discharged the whole harangue upon him; the result being that the dear lad, who already fancied himself another Rudel in quest of the Lady of Tripoli, spent the next two days in composing these verses, the only ones (to my knowledge) ever finished by him:

NAT FIENNES' SONG TO THE UNDISCOVERED LADY.

"Thou, thou, that art My port, my refuge, and my goal, I have no chart, No compass but a heart Trembling t'ward thee and to no other pole.

"My star! Adrift On seas that well-nigh overwhelm, Still when they lift I strain toward the rift, And steer, and hold my courage to the helm.

"With ivory comb, Daylong thou dalliest dreaming where The rainbow foam Enisles thy murmuring home: Home too for me, though I behold it ne'er!

"Yet when the bird Is tired, and each little wave, Aloft is heard A call, reminds thee gird Thy robe and climb to where the summits rave:

"Yea, to the white Lone sea-mark shaken on the verge— 'What of the night?' Ah, climb—ah, lift the light! Ah, lamp thy lover labouring in the surge!

"Fray'd rope, burst sail, Drench'd wing, as moth toward the spark— I fetch, I fail, Glad only that the gale Breaks not my faith upon the brutal dark.

"Be it frost or fire, Thy bosom, I believed it warm: I did aspire For that, and my desire— Burn thou or freeze—fought thro' and beat the storm.

"Thou, thou, that art My sole salvation, fixed, afar, I have no chart, No compass but a heart Hungry for thee and for no other star."

"Humph!" said I, by way of criticism, when these verses were shown to me. "Where be the mackerel lines, Captain Jo? There's too much love-talk aboard this ship of yours."

"Mackerel?" said Captain Jo. "Why, where's your bait?"

"You shall lend me an inch off your pipe-stem," said I, and, to tease Nat, began to hum the senseless old song:

"She has ta'en a siller wand An' gi'en strokes three, An' chang'd my sister Masery To a mack'rel of the sea. And every Saturday at noon The mack'rel comes to me, An' she takes my laily head An' lays it on her knee, An' kames it wi' a kame o' pearl, An' washes it i' the sea—"

"Mackerel?" said Captain Pomery. "If ye found one fool enough to take hold at the rate we're sailing, ye'd pull his head off."

"Why, then, he would be off his head," answered I: "and there are plenty here to make him feel at home."

In truth I was nettled; jealous, as a lad in his first friendship is quick to be. Were not Nat and I of one age? Then why should he be leaving thoughts we might share, to think of woman? I had chafed at Oxford against his precocious entanglements. Here on shipboard his propensity was past a joke; with no goose in sight to mistake for a swan, he must needs conjure up an imaginary princess for his devotion. What irritated most of all was his assuming, because I had not arrived at his folly, the right to treat me as a child.

South and across the Bay of Biscay the weather gave us a halcyon passage; the wind falling lighter and lighter until, within ten leagues of Gibraltar, we ran into a flat calm, and Captain Pomery's face began to show his vexation.

The vexation I could understand—for your seaman naturally hates calm weather—but scarcely the degree of it in a man of temperament so placid. Hitherto he had taken delight in the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. Suddenly, and almost pettishly, he laid an embargo on that instrument, and moreover sent word down to the hold and commanded old Worthyvale to desist from hammering on the ballast. All noise, in fact, appeared to irritate him.

Mr. Badcock pocketed his flute in some dudgeon, and for occupation fell to drinking with Mr. Fett; whose potations, if they did not sensibly lighten the ship, heightened, at least, her semblance of buoyancy with a deck-cargo of empty bottles. My father put no restraint upon these topers.

"Drink, gentlemen," said he; "drink by all means so long as it amuses you. I had far rather you exceeded than that I should appear inhospitable."

"Magnifshent old man," Mr. Fett hiccuped to me confidentially, "an' magnifshent liquor. As the song shays—I beg your pardon, the shong says—able 'make a cat speak an' man dumb—

"Like 'n old courtier of the queen's An' the queen's old courtier—"

Chorus, Mr. Bawcock, if you please, an', by the way, won't mind my calling you Bawcock, will you? Good Shakespearean word, bawcock: euphonious, too—

"Accomplisht eke to flute it and to sing, Euphonious Bawcock bids the welkin ring."

"If," said Mr. Badcock, in an injured tone and with a dark glance aft at Captain Pomery, "if a man don't like my playing, he has only to say so. I don't press it on any one. From all I ever heard, art is a matter of taste. But I don't understand a man's being suddenly upset by a tune that, only yesterday, he couldn't hear often enough."

Out of the little logic I had picked up at Oxford I tried to explain to him the process known as sorites; and suggested that Captain Pomery, while tolerant of "I attempt from Love's sickness to fly" up to the hundredth repetition, might conceivably show signs of tiring at the hundred-and-first. Yet in my heart I mistrusted my own argument, and my wonder at the skipper's conduct increased when, the next dawn finding us still becalmed, but with the added annoyance of a fog that almost hid the bowsprit's end, his demeanour swung back to joviality. I taxed him with this, in my father's hearing.

"I make less account of fogs than most men," he answered. "I can smell land; which is a gift and born with me. But this is no weather to be caught in anywhere near the Sallee coast; and if we're to lose the wind, let's have a good fog to hide us, I say."

He went on to assure us that the seas hereabouts were infested with Moorish pirates, and to draw some dismal pictures of what might happen if we fell in with a prowling Sallateen.

With all his fears he kept his reckoning admirably, and we half-sailed, half-drifted through the Strait, and so near to the Rock of Gibraltar that, passing within range of it at the hour of reveilly, we heard the British bugles sounding to us like ghosts through the fog. Captain Pomery here was in two minds about laying-to and waiting for a breeze; but a light slant of wind encouraged him to carry the Gauntlet through. It bore us between the invisible strait, and for a score of sea-miles beyond; then, as casually as it had helped, it deserted us.

Day broke and discovered us with the Moorish coast low on our starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing, and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various affecting narratives—as that the Gauntlet was sinking, or desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and longitude—insert them in empty bottles, and commit them to the chances of the deep. The object (as Mr. Fett explained it) being to throw Billy Priske's sweetheart off the scent. For two days past he had been slyly working upon Billy's fears, and was relating to him how, with two words, a Moorish lady had followed Gilbert a Becket from Palestine to London, and found him there—when my father, attracted by the smell of pitch, strolled forward and caught Mr. Badcock in the act of sealing the bottles from a ladle which stood heating over a lamp. In the next five minutes the pair learnt that my father could lose his temper, and the lesson visibly scared them.

"Your pardon, sir," twittered Mr. Fett. "'Twas a foolish joke, I confess."

"I may lend some point to it," answered my father grimly, "by telling you what I had a mind to conceal, that you stand at this moment at no far remove from one of the worst dangers you have playfully invented. The wind has dropped again, as you perceive. Along the coast yonder live the worst pirates in the world, and with a glass we may all but discern the dreadful barracks in which so many hundreds of our fellow-Christians lie at this moment languishing. Please God we are only visible from the hill-country, and coast tribes may miss to descry us! For our goal lies north and east, and to fail of it would break my heart. But 'twere a high enterprise for England some day to smoke out these robbers, and I know none to which a Christian man could more worthily engage himself."