uls, wine in rivers,
Dash the window-glass to shivers!
For three wild lads were we, brave boys,
And three wild lads were we;
Thou on the land, and I on the sand,
And Jack on the gallows-tree!

That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now! And now let us talk
about our business.'

'YOUR business, if you please,' said Hatteraick. 'Hagel and donner! mine
was done when I got out of the bilboes.'

'Have patience, my good friend; I'll convince you our interests are just
the same.'

Hatteraick gave a short dry cough, and Glossin, after a pause, proceeded.

'How came you to let the boy escape?'

'Why, fluch and blitzen! he was no charge of mine. Lieutenant Brown gave
him to his cousin that's in the Middleburgh house of Vanbeest and
Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about his being taken in a
skirmish with the land-sharks; he gave him for a footboy. Me let him
escape! the bastard kinchin should have walked the plank ere I troubled
myself about him.'

'Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?'

'Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he gave him
his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then sent him to India;
I believe he would have packed him back here, but his nephew told him it
would do up the free trade for many a day if the youngster got back to
Scotland.'

'Do you think the younker knows much of his own origin now?'

'Deyvil!' replied Hatteraick, 'how should I tell what he knows now? But
he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten years old he
persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard like himself to
steal my lugger's khan--boat--what do you call it? to return to his
country, as he called it; fire him! Before we could overtake them they
had the skiff out of channel as far as the Deurloo; the boat might have
been lost.'

'I wish to Heaven she had, with him in her!' ejaculated Glossin.

'Why, I was so angry myself that, sapperment! I did give him a tip over
the side; but split him! the comical little devil swam like a duck; so I
made him swim astern for a mile to teach him manners, and then took him
in when he was sinking. By the knocking Nicholas I he'll plague you, now
he's come over the herring-pond! When he was so high he had the spirit of
thunder and lightning.'

'How did he get back from India?'

'Why, how should I know? The house there was done up; and that gave us a
shake at Middleburgh, I thin