n of fitting on the cap of
the unknown woman. Why should she? Jenny did not know who the woman
was--that was as plain as a pickle. Then where was the good of
confessing?

CHAPTER VI.

While Jenny Crow was doing her easy duty at Castle Mona, Lovibond was
engaged in a task of yet more simplicity at Fort Ann. On returning
from Laxey he found Captain Davey occupied with Willie Quarrie in
preparations for a farewell supper to be given that night to the cronies
who had helped him to spend his fortune. These worthies had deserted
his company since Lovibond had begun to take all the winnings, including
some of their own earlier ones; and hence the necessity to invite them.
"There's ould Billy, the carrier--ask him," Davy was saying, as he lay
stretched on the sofa, puffing whorls of gray smoke from a pipe of thick
twist. "And then there's Kerruish, the churchwarden, and Kewley, the
crier, and Hugh Corlett, the blacksmith, and Tommy Tubman, the brewer,
and Willie Qualtrough, that keeps the lodging-house contagious, and the
fat man that bosses the Sick and Indignant society, and the long,
lanky shanks that is the headpiece of the Friendly and Malevolent
Association--got them all down, boy?"

"They're all through there in my head already, Capt'n," groaned Willie
Quarrie in despair, as he struggled at the table to keep pace with his
slow pen to Davy's impetuous tongue.

"Then ask whosomever you plaze, boy," said Davy. "What's it saying in
the ould Book: 'Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to
come in.' Only it's the back-courts and the public-houses this time, and
you'll be wanting no grappling hooks to fetch them. Just whip a whisky
bottle under your arm, and they'll be asking for no other invitation.
Reminds me, sir," he added, looking up as Lovibond entered, "reminds me
of little Jimmy Quayle's aisy way of fetching poor Hughie Collister
from the bottom of Ramsey harbor. Himself and Hughie were same as
brothers--that thick--and they'd been middling hard on the drink
together, and one night Hughie, going home to Andreas, tumbled over the
bridge by the sandy road and got hisself washed away and drowned. So the
boys fetched grapplings and went out immadient to drag for the body,
but Jimmy took another notion. He rigged up a tremenjous long pole, like
your mawther's clothes' prop on washing day and tied a string to the
top of it, and baited the end of the string with an empty bottle of Ould
Tom, and then sa