an what we say; and next voyage I come along, I'll bring my
credentials, and if Mr. Fox knows a man with better, then I'll throw up
the sponge, but not before."

He took it in that calm and gentlemanlike fashion, but he didn't know his
company, or their ideas of proper behaviour; and he didn't know the power
her uncle had got over Christie, or the savage nature of the man, that
would stick at nothing if crossed.

When he was gone, Fox ordered his niece to her chamber, and when she
hesitated, he took her by the scruff of the neck, drove her upstairs to
the dormer attic that was hers, pushed her in and locked the door on her.
"And there you shall bide, and there you shall starve till you beg my
pardon and your aunt's pardon, and take Mr. Bassett, as we will for you to
do," he said.

Stunned and frightened out of her life, the girl very near fainted after
such treatment; but the night came and passed, and not a sound of her
people did she hear; and in the morning--Sunday--'twas Fox tramped up over
the stairs and opened her door and asked if she'd changed her mind. She
said "No," of course, and begged him for honour and the love of God to be
reasonable; but he only cursed her and locked her in again and went his
way.

Later her aunt came, but Christie won no comfort from her tongue, and
presently stared out at the shocking truth, that in a Christian country
among Christian folks, she was going to be starved to death, because she
wouldn't wed William Bassett. On Sunday night Ted would sail again, and
she doubted if he'd come to see her till he returned, for his papers were
at Jersey along with his mother. Then she thought what lay in her power to
do about it, and if it was possible to get at Alice Chick, the barmaid--a
very clever creature and very fond of Christie. But there was no chance of
that, and she felt sure that Alice had been told she was ill and must not
be seen.

But it happened that the other girl knew all about the tragedy, because
Mr. Bassett had come in the night before, and Mrs. Fox, who was in the
bar, had spoken with him and told what was going forward, and William
hadn't liked it none too well. So Alice, though she seemed busy and
bustled about as usual, heard the ugly truth, or enough of it to guide her
actions.

She thought first of going to William Bassett herself, but she couldn't be
sure of him, and so went to her own lover instead. Andrew Beal he was--a
fisherman that worked for Fox--and that