air, as he drew his
right hand across his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his
rough outer coat, 'it happened somewhere about here as I reckon. I don't
think it can have been a mile from here.'

'Were you drunk?' asked Pleasant.

'I was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been drinking, you
understand. A mouthful did it.'

Pleasant with a grave look shook her head; importing that she understood
the process, but decidedly disapproved.

'Fair trade is one thing,' said she, 'but that's another. No one has a
right to carry on with Jack in THAT way.'

'The sentiment does you credit,' returned the man, with a grim smile;
and added, in a mutter, 'the more so, as I believe it's not your
father's.--Yes, I had a bad time of it, that time. I lost everything,
and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as I was.'

'Did you get the parties punished?' asked Pleasant.

'A tremendous punishment followed,' said the man, more seriously; 'but
it was not of my bringing about.'

'Of whose, then?' asked Pleasant.

The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that
hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing
her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood felt more
and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so stern, so
self-possessed.

'Anyways,' said the damsel, 'I am glad punishment followed, and I say
so. Fair trade with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of
violence. I am as much against deeds of violence being done to seafaring
men, as seafaring men can be themselves. I am of the same opinion as my
mother was, when she was living. Fair trade, my mother used to say, but
no robbery and no blows.' In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have
taken--and indeed did take when she could--as much as thirty shillings
a week for board that would be dear at five, and likewise conducted the
Leaving business upon correspondingly equitable principles; yet she had
that tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity, that the
moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman's
champion, even against her father whom she seldom otherwise resisted.

But, she was here interrupted by her father's voice exclaiming angrily,
'Now, Poll Parrot!' and by her father's hat being heavily flung from his
hand and striking her face. Accustomed to such occasional manifestations
of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely wiped her face