or him, and
asked for news of the _Spitfire_. "Well, sir," he answered, "she's
just what I've come to talk to ye about. She'd started a butt as I all
along thought, otherwise she's as sound as a bell. There was a
shipwright as came down to look at her, and he asked me what we was
going to do. I told him that I didn't think the gent as owned her
meant to repair her. 'I rather fancy,' I says, says I, feeling my way,
'that he wants to sell her.' 'How much do 'ee ask, d'ye know?' says
he, looking at the little dandy. 'I'm sure I can't answer that,' says
I, 'but dessay he'll accept any reasonable offer.' Says he, 'May I
view her?' 'Sartinly,' I says, says I. He thoroughly overhauled her
inside and out, and then, says he, 'I believe I knows a customer for
this here craft. Suppose you go and larn what the gentleman wants, and
let me know. You'll find me at--' and here he names a public-house."

"Get what you can for her, Caudel," I answered; "the more the better
for those to whom the money will go. For my part, as you know, I
consider her as at the bottom, but since you've pulled her through I'll
ask you to pack up certain articles which are on board; the cabin
clock, the plate, my books," and I named a few other items of the
little craft's internal furniture.

Well, he sat with me for half-an-hour talking over the dandy and our
adventures, then left me, and I went into the town to make a few
necessary purchases, missing the society of my darling as though I had
lost my right arm; indeed, I felt so wretched without her that,
declining the landlord's invitation to join a select circle of Penzance
wits over whom he was in the habit of presiding in the evening in a
smoking-room full of the vapour of tobacco and the steam of hot rum and
whisky, I went to bed at nine o'clock, and may say that I did not sleep
the less soundly for missing the heave of the ocean.

Next morning shortly after breakfast Frank arrived to drive me over to
----. Until we were clear of the town he could talk of nothing but
Grace, how sweet she was, how exquisite her breeding, how gentle. All
this was as it should be, and I heard him with delight.

"But I want you to understand, Herbert, that my conscience never could
have suffered me to countenance this elopement but for Lady Amelia's
efforts--underhand efforts I must say--to procure her niece's
perversion."

"Oh, I quite understand that," I exclaimed.

"She informs me that both her fat