tain Davy
hisself at Forte Ann over, drinking and tearing and carrying on till
all's blue."

Lovibond found Captain Davy in the smoke-room with a face as hard as a
frozen turnip, one leg over the arm of an elbow chair, a church-warden
pipe in his mouth, a gigantic glass of brandy and soda before him, and
an admiring circle of the laziest riff-raff of the town about him. As
soon as they were alone he said:

"But what's this that your boy tells me, captain?"

"I'm foundered," said Davy, "broke, wrecked, the screw of my tide's gone
twisting on the rocks. I'm done, mate, I'm done."

Then he proceeded to recite the incidents of the quarrel, coloring them
by the light of the numerous glasses with which he had covered his brain
since morning.

"'You've married me for my money,' says I. 'What else?' said she. 'Then
d------ the money,' says I, 'I'll lave you till it's gone.' 'Do it and
welcome,' says she, and I'm doing it, bad cess to it, I'm doing it.
But, stop this jaw. I swore to myself I wouldn't spake of it to any man
living. What d'ye drink? I've took to the brandy swig myself. Join
in. Mate!" (this in a voice of thunder to the waiter at the end of the
adjoining room) "brandy for the gentleman."

Lovibond waited a moment and then said quietly, "But whatever made you
give her an ungenerous stab like that, captain?"

Davy looked up curiously and answered, "That's just what I've tooken six
big drinks to find out. But no use at all, and what's left to do?"

"Why take it back?" said Lovibond.

"No, deng my buttons if I will."

"Why not?"

"'Cause it's true."

Lovibond waited again, and then said in another voice, "And is this the
little girl you used to tell of out yonder on the coast--Nessy, Nelly,
Nell, what was it?"

Davy's eyes began to fill, but his mouth remained firm. He cleared his
throat noisily, shook the dust out of his pipe on to the heel of his
boot, and said, "No--yes--no--Well, it is and it isn't. It's Nelly
Kinvig, that's sarten sure. But the juice of the woman's sowl's dried
up."

"The little thing that used to know your rap at the kitchen window, and
come tripping out like a bird chirping in the night, and go linking down
the lane with you in the starlight?"

Davy broke the shaft of his churchwarden into small lengths, and flung
the pieces out at the open window and said, "I darn't say no."

"The one that stuck to you like wax when her father gave you the great
bounce out--eh?"

Davy wr