boy, it ended like my glass here--hot and strong stuff,
with sugar at the bottom. And I don't see this, so glad as I saw that, my
word of honour on it! Boys all!" Stephen drank the dregs.

Mrs. Boulby was still in attendance. The talk over the circumstances was
sweeter than the bare facts, and the replenished glass enabled Stephen to
add the picturesque bits of the affray, unspurred by a surrounding
eagerness of his listeners--too exciting for imaginative effort. In
particular, he dwelt on Robert's dropping the reins and riding with his
heels at Algernon, when Mrs. Lovell put her horse in his way, and the
pair of horses rose like waves at sea, and both riders showed their
horsemanship, and Robert an adroit courtesy, for which the lady thanked
him with a bow of her head.

"I got among the hounds, pretending to pacify them, and call 'em
together," said Stephen, "and I heard her say--just before all was over,
and he turned off--I heard her say: 'Trust this to me: I will meet you.'
I'll swear to them exact words, though there was more, and a 'where' in
the bargain, and that I didn't hear. Aha! by George! thinks I, old Bob,
you're a lucky beggar, and be hanged if I wouldn't go mad too for a
minute or so of short, sweet, private talk with a lovely young widow lady
as ever the sun did shine upon so boldly--oho!

You've seen a yacht upon the sea,
She dances and she dances, O!
As fair is my wild maid to me...

Something about 'prances, O!' on her horse, you know, or you're a hem'd
fool if you don't. I never could sing; wish I could! It's the joy of
life! It's utterance! Hey for harmony!"

"Eh! brayvo! now you're a man, Steeve! and welcomer and welcomest;
yi--yi, O!" jolly Butcher Billing sang out sharp. "Life wants watering.
Here's a health to Robert Eccles, wheresoever and whatsoever! and ne'er a
man shall say of me I didn't stick by a friend like Bob. Cheers, my
lads!"

Robert's health was drunk in a thunder, and praises of the purity of the
brandy followed the grand roar. Mrs. Boulby received her compliments on
that head.

"'Pends upon the tide, Missis, don't it?" one remarked with a grin broad
enough to make the slyness written on it easy reading.

"Ah! first a flow and then a ebb," said another.

"It's many a keg I plant i' the mud,
Coastguardsman, come! and I'll have your blood!"

Instigation cried, "Cut along;" but the defiant smuggler was deficient in
memory, and like Steeve Bilton,