k; so they sent me again to see what could be
done among my old acquaintances here, for we held old stories were done
away and forgotten. So I had got a pretty trade on foot within the last
two trips; but that stupid hounds-foot schelm, Brown, has knocked it on
the head again, I suppose, with getting himself shot by the colonel-man.'

'Why were not you with them?'

'Why, you see, sapperment! I fear nothing; but it was too far within
land, and I might have been scented.'

'True. But to return to this youngster--'

'Ay, ay, donner and blitzen! HE'S your affair,' said the Captain.

'How do you really know that he is in this country?'

'Why, Gabriel saw him up among the hills.'

'Gabriel! who is he?'

'A fellow from the gipsies, that, about eighteen years since, was pressed
on board that d--d fellow Pritchard's sloop-of-war. It was he came off
and gave us warning that the Shark was coming round upon us the day
Kennedy was done; and he told us how Kennedy had given the information.
The gipsies and Kennedy had some quarrel besides. This Gab went to the
East Indies in the same ship with your younker, and, sapperment! knew him
well, though the other did not remember him. Gab kept out of his eye
though, as he had served the States against England, and was a deserter
to boot; and he sent us word directly, that we might know of his being
here, though it does not concern us a rope's end.'

'So, then, really, and in sober earnest, he is actually in this country,
Hatteraick, between friend and friend?' asked Glossin, seriously.

'Wetter and donner, yaw! What do you take me for?'

'For a bloodthirsty, fearless miscreant!' thought Glossin internally; but
said aloud, 'And which of your people was it that shot young Hazlewood?'

'Sturmwetter!' said the Captain, 'do ye think we were mad? none of US,
man. Gott! the country was too hot for the trade already with that d-d
frolic of Brown's, attacking what you call Woodbourne House.'

'Why, I am told,' said Glossin, 'it was Brown who shot Hazlewood?'

'Not our lieutenant, I promise you; for he was laid six feet deep at
Derncleugh the day before the thing happened. Tausend deyvils, man! do ye
think that he could rise out of the earth to shoot another man?'

A light here began to break upon Glossin's confusion of ideas. 'Did you
not say that the younker, as you call him, goes by the name of Brown?'

'Of Brown? yaw; Vanbeest Brown. Old Vanbeest Brown, of our Vanbeest and
Vanbrug