stuffing
and some egg sauce. Come, Cap'en Cuttle! Give yourself a little treat!'

'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain very humbly.

'I'm sure you're out of sorts, and want to be stimulated,' said Mrs
MacStinger. 'Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry wine?'

'Well, Ma'am,' rejoined the Captain, 'if you'd be so good as take a
glass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favour,
Ma'am,' said the Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, 'to accept a
quarter's rent ahead?'

'And why so, Cap'en Cuttle?' retorted Mrs MacStinger--sharply, as the
Captain thought.

The Captain was frightened to dead 'If you would Ma'am,' he said with
submission, 'it would oblige me. I can't keep my money very well. It
pays itself out. I should take it kind if you'd comply.'

'Well, Cap'en Cuttle,' said the unconscious MacStinger, rubbing her
hands, 'you can do as you please. It's not for me, with my family, to
refuse, no more than it is to ask.'

'And would you, Ma'am,' said the Captain, taking down the tin canister
in which he kept his cash' from the top shelf of the cupboard, 'be so
good as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? If
you could make it convenient, Ma'am, to pass the word presently for them
children to come for'ard, in a body, I should be glad to see 'em.'

These innocent MacStingers were so many daggers to the Captain's breast,
when they appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confiding
trustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, who
had been his favourite, was insupportable to the Captain; the voice of
Juliana MacStinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward of
him.

Captain Cuttle kept up appearances, nevertheless, tolerably well, and
for an hour or two was very hardly used and roughly handled by the young
MacStingers: who in their childish frolics, did a little damage also
to the glazed hat, by sitting in it, two at a time, as in a nest, and
drumming on the inside of the crown with their shoes. At length the
Captain sorrowfully dismissed them: taking leave of these cherubs with
the poignant remorse and grief of a man who was going to execution.

In the silence of night, the Captain packed up his heavier property in a
chest, which he locked, intending to leave it there, in all probability
for ever, but on the forlorn chance of one day finding a man
sufficiently bold and desperate to come and ask for it. Of his ligh