Frisking and mumming like an elf in moonlight!
--BEN JONSON.

Peveril found the master of the vessel rather less rude than those in
his station of life usually are, and received from him full satisfaction
concerning the fate of Fenella, upon whom the captain bestowed a hearty
curse, for obliging him to lay-to until he had sent his boat ashore, and
had her back again.

"I hope," said Peveril, "no violence was necessary to reconcile her to
go ashore? I trust she offered no foolish resistance?"

"Resist! mein Gott," said the captain, "she did resist like a troop of
horse--she did cry, you might hear her at Whitehaven--she did go up
the rigging like a cat up a chimney; but dat vas ein trick of her old
trade."

"What trade do you mean?" said Peveril.

"Oh," said the seaman, "I vas know more about her than you, Meinheer.
I vas know that she vas a little, very little girl, and prentice to one
seiltanzer, when my lady yonder had the good luck to buy her."

"A seiltanzer!" said Peveril; "what do you mean by that?"

"I mean a rope-danzer, a mountebank, a Hans pickel-harring. I vas know
Adrian Brackel vell--he sell de powders dat empty men's stomach, and
fill him's own purse. Not know Adrian Brackel, mein Gott! I have smoked
many a pound of tabak with him."

Peveril now remembered that Fenella had been brought into the family
when he and the young Earl were in England, and while the Countess was
absent on an expedition to the continent. Where the Countess found her,
she never communicated to the young men; but only intimated, that she
had received her out of compassion, in order to relieve her from a
situation of extreme distress.

He hinted so much to the communicative seaman, who replied, "that for
distress he knew nocht's on't; only, that Adrian Brackel beat her
when she would not dance on the rope, and starved her when she did,
to prevent her growth." The bargain between the countess and the
mountebank, he said, he had made himself; because the Countess had hired
his brig upon her expedition to the continent. None else knew where
she came from. The Countess had seen her on a public stage at
Ostend--compassionated her helpless situation, and the severe treatment
she received--and had employed him to purchase the poor creature from
her master, and charged him with silence towards all her retinue.--"And
so I do keep silence," continued the faithful confidant, "van