, and made his father
house the old creature, and worked at farming, though he hated it,
to pay for her subsistence. He vindicated the honour of Warbeach by
drinking a match against a Yorkshire skipper till four o'clock in
the morning, when it was a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire
steadying the defeated North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to
his flattish-bottomed billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise on the
river--yo-ho! ahoy!

Glorious Robert had tried, first the sea, and then soldiering. Now let
us hope he'll settle to farming, and follow his rare old father's ways,
and be back among his own people for good. So chimed the younger ones,
and many of the elder.

Danish blood had settled round Warbeach. To be a really popular hero
anywhere in Britain, a lad must still, I fear, have something of
a Scandinavian gullet; and if, in addition to his being a powerful
drinker, he is pleasant in his cups, and can sing, and forgive, be
freehanded, and roll out the grand risky phrases of a fired brain, he
stamps himself, in the apprehension of his associates, a king.

Much of the stuff was required to deal King Robert of Warbeach the
capital stroke, and commonly he could hold on till a puff of cold air
from the outer door, like an admonitory messenger, reminded him that he
was, in the greatness of his soul, a king of swine; after which his way
of walking off, without a word to anybody, hoisting his whole stature,
while others were staggering, or roaring foul rhymes, or feeling
consciously mortal in their sensation of feverishness, became a theme
for admiration; ay, and he was fresh as an orchard apple in the morning!
there lay his commandership convincingly. What was proved overnight was
confirmed at dawn.

Mr. Robert had his contrast in Sedgett's son, Nicodemus Sedgett, whose
unlucky Christian name had assisted the wits of Warbeach in bestowing
on him a darkly-luminous relationship. Young Nic loved also to steep his
spirit in the bowl; but, in addition to his never paying for his luxury,
he drank as if in emulation of the colour of his reputed patron, and
neighbourhood to Nic Sedgett was not liked when that young man became
thoughtful over his glass.

The episode of his stabbing the landlady's son Harry clung to him
fatally. The wound was in the thigh, and nothing serious. Harry was
up and off to sea before Nic had ceased to show the marks of Robert's
vengeance upon him; but blood-shedding, even on a small scale,