can a man want more? I glory in the
woman's sperrit. I'd ha' done it myself--od send if I wouldn't, if a
husband had behaved so to me! I'd go, and 'a might call, and call, till
his keacorn was raw; but I'd never come back--no, not till the great
trumpet, would I!"

"Well, the woman will be better off," said another of a more
deliberative turn. "For seafaring natures be very good shelter for shorn
lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty of money, which is what she's
not been used to lately, by all showings."

"Mark me--I'll not go after her!" said the trusser, returning doggedly
to his seat. "Let her go! If she's up to such vagaries she must suffer
for 'em. She'd no business to take the maid--'tis my maid; and if it
were the doing again she shouldn't have her!"

Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an indefensible
proceeding, perhaps because it was late, the customers thinned away
from the tent shortly after this episode. The man stretched his elbows
forward on the table leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to
snore. The furmity seller decided to close for the night, and after
seeing the rum-bottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that remained on
hand, loaded into the cart, came to where the man reclined. She shook
him, but could not wake him. As the tent was not to be struck that
night, the fair continuing for two or three days, she decided to let the
sleeper, who was obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and his basket
with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and lowering the flap of the
tent, she left it, and drove away.

2.

The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when
the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the marquee,
and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it. Besides
the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about--at the
benches--at the table supported by trestles--at his basket of tools--at
the stove where the furmity had been boiled--at the empty basins--at
some shed grains of wheat--at the corks which dotted the grassy floor.
Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining object, and picked
it up. It was his wife's ring.

A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come
back to him, and he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. A rustling
revealed the sailor's bank-notes thrust carelessly in.

This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now