lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside
chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock
again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a
deep grunt of relief. "There she is safe!" Magdalen heard him say, in
regretful soliloquy. "As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a pity!
what a pity!"

The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left
alone in her room.

Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the
corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always burning.
He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against the
opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of his
own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his
great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect
of illimitable doubt. "I'm all abroad to-night," he mumbled to himself.
"Troubled in my mind--that's what it is--troubled in my mind."

The old patched slippers and the veteran's existing perplexities
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the relation
of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken
one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still
persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service.
Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the village
cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master called for
them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress and completion
of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler betook
themselves to the village inn to drink each other's healths at parting.
They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the night, and
they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect
state of intoxication on either side.

If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night
wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey
the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have
presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the
praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had
sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the
interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had
committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of