been lost and
was found agen. Aw, women for your life, mate, for forgiveness.'"

Lovibond did not speak, and Davy began to laugh in a husky voice.

"Bless me, the talk a man will put out when he's a bit over the rope and
thinking of ould times," he said.

"Sign that I'm thirsty," he added; and then walked toward the window.
"But the father could never forgive hisself," he said, as he was
stepping through, "and if I done wrong to a woman neither could I--I've
that much of the ould man in me anyway."

When he got back to the room the air was dense with tobacco-smoke, and
his guests were shouting for his company. "Capt'n Davy!" "Where's Capt'n
Davy?" "Aw, here's the man himself?" "Been studying the stars, Capt'n?"
"Well, that's a bit of navigation." "Navigation by starlight--I know the
sort. Navigating up alongside a pretty girl, eh, Capt'n?"

There were rough jokes, and strange stories, and more liquor and loud
laughter, and for a time Davy took his part in everything. But after a
while he grew quiet again, and absent in manner, and he glanced up at
intervals in the direction of the window, A new thought had come to him.
It made the sweat to break out at the top of his forehead, and then he
heard no more of the clatter around him than the rum-humdrum as of
a train in a tunnel, pierced sometimes by the shrill scream as of an
occasional whistle. Presently he rolled up again, and went out once more
to Lovibond.

The thought that had seized him was agony, and he could not broach it at
once. So he beat about it for a moment, and then came down on it with a
crash.

"Sitting alone, is she, poor thing?" he said.

"Alone," said Lovibond.

"I know, I know," said Davy. "Like a bird on a bough calling mournful
for her mate; but he's gone, he's down, maybe worse, but lost anyway.
Yet if he should ever come back now--eh?"

"He'll have to be quick then," said Lovibond; "for she intends to go
home to her people soon."

"Did you say she was for going home?" said Davy, eagerly. "Home
where--where to--to England?"

"No," said Lovibond. "Havn't I told you she's a Manx woman?"

"A Manx woman, is she?" said Davy. "What's her name?"

"I didn't ask her that," said Lovibond.

"Then where's her home?" said Davy.

"I forget the name of the place," said Lovibond. "Balla--something."

"Is it---- is it----" Davy was speaking very quickly--"is it Ballaugh,
sir?"

"That's it," and Lovibond. "And her father's farm--I heard the name