heard the grating of the key
from outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and old Mazey
re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his intoxication had
cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. He breathed harder
than ever, in a succession of low growls, and wagged his venerable head
at his own delinquencies without intermission.

"How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats?" inquired the old
sailor. "Has your conscience been quiet enough to let you go to sleep?"

"I have not slept," said Magdalen, drawing back from him in doubt of
what he might do next. "I have no remembrance of what happened after you
locked the door--I think I must have fainted. Don't frighten me again,
Mr. Mazey! I feel miserably weak and ill. What do you want?"

"I want to say something serious," replied old Mazey, with impenetrable
solemnity. "It's been on my mind to come here and make a clean breast of
it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, young woman. I'm going to
disgrace myself."

Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in rising
alarm.

"I know my duty to his honor the admiral," proceeded old Mazey, waving
his hand drearily in the direction of his master's door. "But, try
as hard as I may, I can't find it in my heart, you young jade, to be
witness against you. I liked the make of you (especially about the
waist) when you first came into the house, and I can't help liking the
make of you still--though you _have_ committed burglary, and though you
_are_ as crooked as Sin. I've cast the eyes of indulgence on fine-grown
girls all my life, and it's too late in the day to cast the eyes of
severity on 'em now. I'm seventy-seven, or seventy-eight, I don't
rightly know which. I'm a battered old hulk, with my seams opening, and
my pumps choked, and the waters of Death powering in on me as fast as
they can. I'm as miserable a sinner as you'll meet with anywhere in
these parts--Thomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he's worse
than I am, for he's the younger of the two, and he ought to know better.
But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave with an
eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl. More shame for me, you young
Jezebel--more shame for me!"

The veteran's unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him,
as he concluded his harangue in these terms: the last reserves of
austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the
corners of his mout