him by the ear; but
Elizabeth Jane declared that, after four nights of it, she, for her
part, limited her hopes to shannies.

Cherry swept them together, and filed them indoors through the trap
in righteous wrath, taking her opportunity to box the ears of each.
"Come'st along, Hester."

Hester was preparing to follow, when she heard a subdued laugh. It
seemed to come from the far side of the parapet, and below her. She
drew her dressing-gown close about her and leaned over.

She looked down upon a stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence
along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon
mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon
a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted
taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the bowsprit again,
when, close by the foremast, they were arrested, and she caught her
breath sharply.

There, with his naked feet on the bulwarks and one hand against the
house-wall, in the shadow of which he leaned out-board, stood a man.
His other hand grasped a short stick; and with it he was reaching
up to the window above him--her bedroom window. The window, she
remembered, was open at the bottom--an inch or two, no more. The man
slipped the end of his stick under the sash and prised it up quietly.
Next he raised himself on tiptoe, and thrust the stick a foot or so
through the opening; worked it slowly along the window-ledge, and
hesitated; then pulled with a light jerk, as an angler strikes a fish.
And Hester, holding her breath, saw the stick withdrawn, inch by inch;
and at the end of it a garment--her petticoat!

"How dare you!"

The thief whipped himself about, jumped back upon deck, and stood
smiling up at her, with the petticoat in his hand. It was the young
sailor she had danced with.

"How dare you? Oh, I'd be ashamed!"

"Midsummer Eve!" said he, and laughed.

"Give it up at once!" She dared not speak loudly, but felt herself
trembling with wrath.

"That's not likely." He unhitched it from the fish-hook he had spliced
to the end of his stick. "And after the trouble I've taken!"

"I'll call your captain, and he'll make you give it up."

"The old man's sleeping ashore, and won't be down till nine in the
morning. I'm alone here." He stepped to the fore-halliards. "Now I'll
just hoist this up to the topmast head, and you'll see what a pretty
flag it makes in the morning."

"Oh, please...!"

He turned his back an