o become a member of our committee....' Com-mittee! I know the
sort--kind of religious firm where there's three partners, only two of
them's sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie."

This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. "Still
bent on spending your money, Captain?" he said. "Don't you see that the
people who write you these begging letters are impostors?"

"Coorse I do," said Davy. "What's it saying in the Ould Book? 'Where the
carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.' Only, as Parson
Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, 'Summat's gone screw with the
translation theer, friends, should have been vultures."

"Half of them will only drink your money, Captain," said Lovibond.

"And what for shouldn't they? That's what I'm doing," said Davy.

"It's poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn't always think: money was
a thing to pitch into a ditch."

"Always? My goodness, no!" said Davy. "Time was once when I thought
money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a
slip of a lad, didn't I?" said he, sobering very suddenly. "The father
was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the
lot of us. They all went off except myself--the sisters and brothers.
Poor things, they wasn't willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But
there's mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young
ones out, and the mawther's father was at us still. Lame though of his
legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn't
do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over
his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats,
and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire.
The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley--sixpence a day dry days, and
fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do's, mate. And when she'd give
the ould man his basin of broth he'd be saying, squeaky-like, 'Give
it to the boy, woman; he's a growing lad?' 'Chut! take it, man,' the
mawther would say, and then he'd be whimpering, 'I'm keeping you long,
Liza, I'm keeping you long.' And there was herself making a noise with
her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth,
and swearing to myself like mad, 'As sure as the living God I'll be ruch
some day.' And now--"

Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and
said shortly, "Where've you b