e clue to his manoeuvres, by questioning the old woman closely. I
hope you parted good friends?"

"The best in the world, Captain Cuffe. No one that feeds and lodges _me_
well, need dread me as an enemy!"

"I'll warrant it! That's the reason you are so loyal, Clinch?"

The hard, red face of the master's mate worked a little, and, though he
could not well look all sorts of colors, he looked all ways but in his
captain's eye. It was now ten years since he ought to have been a
lieutenant, having once actually outranked Cuffe, in the way of date of
service at least; and his conscience told him two things quite
distinctly: first, the fact of his long and weary probation; second,
that it was, in a great degree, his own fault.

"I love His Majesty, sir," Clinch observed, after giving a gulp, "and I
never lay anything that goes hard with myself to his account. Still,
memory will be memory; and spite of all I can do, sir, I sometimes
remember what I _might_ have been, as well as what I _am_. If his
Majesty _does_ feed me, it is with the spoon of a master's mate; and if
he _does_ lodge me, it is in the cockpit."

"I have been your shipmate often, and for years at a time," answered
Cuffe good-naturedly, though a little in the manner of a superior; "and
no one knows your history better. It is not your friends who have failed
you at need, so much as a certain enemy, with whom you will insist on
associating, though he harms them most who love him best."

"Aye, aye, sir--that can't be denied, Captain Cuffe; yet it's a hard
life that passes altogether without hope."

This was uttered with an expression of melancholy that said more for
Clinch's character than Cuffe had witnessed in the man for years, and it
revived many early impressions in his favor. Clinch and he had once been
messmates, even; and though years of a decided disparity in rank had
since interposed their barrier of etiquette and feeling, Cuffe never
could entirely forget the circumstance.

"It is hard, indeed, to live as you say, without hope," returned the
captain; "but hope _ought_ to be the last thing to die. You should make
one more rally, Clinch, before you throw up in despair."

"It is not so much for myself, Captain Cuffe, that I mind it, as for
some that live ashore. My father was as reputable a tradesman as there
was in Plymouth, and when he got me on the quarter-deck he thought he
was about to make a gentleman of me, instead of leaving me to pass a
lif