, having drawn the
required circle. "I don't seem to remember your face."

"No?" The man seemed to think this out at leisure. "I was married
this morning," he said at length with an air of explanation.

"Wish ye joy. Saltash maid?"

"Widow. Name of Sarah Treleaven."

"Why that's my sister!" exclaimed Mr. Jope.

"Is it?" The round-faced man took the news without apparent surprise
or emotion. "Well, I'm married to her, any way."

"Monstrous fine woman," Mr. Jope observed cheerfully.

"Ay; she's all that. It seems like a dream. You'd best step on
board: the ladder's on t'other side."

As we passed under the vessel's stern I looked up and read her name--
_Glad Tidings, Port of Fowey_.

"I've a-broken it to her," our host announced, meeting us at the top
of the ladder. "She says you're to come down."

Down the companion we followed him accordingly and so into a small
cabin occupied--or, let me rather say, filled--by the stoutest woman
it has ever been my lot to meet. She reclined--in such a position
as to display a pair of colossal feet, shoeless, clothed in thick
worsted stockings--upon a locker on the starboard side: and no one,
regarding her, could wonder that this also was the side towards
which the vessel listed. Her broad recumbent back was supported by a
pile of seamen's bags, almost as plethoric as herself and containing
(if one might judge from a number of miscellaneous articles
protruding from their distended mouths) her bridal outfit.
Unprepared as she was for a second visitor in the form of a small
chimney-sweep, she betrayed no astonishment; but after receiving her
brother's kiss on either cheek bent a composed gaze on me, and so
eyed me for perhaps half a minute. Her features were not uncomely.

"O.P.," she addressed her husband. "Ask him, Who's his friend?"

"Who's your friend?" asked the husband, turning to Mr. Jope.

"Chimney-sweep," said Mr. Jope; "leastways, so apprenticed, as I
understand."

The pair gazed at me anew.

"I asked," said the woman at length, "because this is a poor place
for chimbleys."

"He's in trouble," Mr. Jope explained; "in trouble--along o' killing
a Jew."

"Oh no, Mr. Jope!" I cried. "I didn't--"

"Couldn't," interrupted his sister shortly, and fell into a brown
study. "Constables after him?" she asked.

Mr. Jope nodded.

Her next utterance struck me as irrelevant, to say the least of it.
"Ben, 'tis high time you followed O.P.'s example."