iley. I had had a bad knock on the head, and my right arm,
which had been round the girl, was just splintered. They took it off
that night. The first thing as they told me when I came round was that
the gal was safe. I don't know whether I was glad or sorry to hear it.
I was glad, because I had kept my promise and brought her back alive.
I was sorry, because I hated her like pison. Why should she have been
saved when my two boys was drowned? She was well-plucked, was that
gal, for she had never quite lost her senses; and the moment she had
got warm in bed with hot blankets, and suchlike she wanted to get dry
clothes and to go straight on to Scarborough in a carriage. However,
the doctor would not hear of it, and she wrote a little letter saying
as she was all right; and a man galloped off with it on horseback, and
got there just as they had got a carriage to the door to drive over to
Filey to ask if there was any news there about the boat. They came
over and slept there, and she went back with them next day. I heard
all this afterwards, for I was off my head, what with the blow I had
got and one thing and another, before I had been there an hour. And I
raved and cussed at the girl, they tell me, so that they wouldn't let
her father in to see me.

"It was nigh a fortnight before I came to myself, to find my arm gone,
and then I was another month before I was out of bed. They came over
to Filey when I was sensible, and I hear they had got the best doctor
over from Scarborough to see me, and paid everything for me till I was
well, but I wouldn't see them when they came. I was quite as bitter
against her as I had been when I was in the sea drowning; and I was so
fierce when they talked of coming in that the doctor told them it
would make me bad again if they came. So they went up to London, and
when I could get about they sent me a letter, the gal herself and her
father and mother, thanking me, I suppose; but I don't know, for I
just tore 'em into pieces without reading them. Then a lawyer of the
town here came to me and said he'd 'struction to buy me a new boat,
and to buy a 'nuity for me. I told him his 'nuity couldn't bring my
boys back again, and that I warn't going to take blood-money; and as
to the boat, I'd knock a hole in her and sink her if she came. A year
after that lawyer came to me again, and said he'd more 'structions;
and I told him though I'd only one arm left I was man enough still to
knock his head off his