and get your dinner at home, and I'll get mine at the little hotel. Let
our hour of meeting be two o'clock, and you'll find me smoking a cigar in
the sun afore the hotel door. Tell Tom Pettifer, my steward, to consider
himself on duty, and to look after your people till we come back; you'll
find he'll have made himself useful to 'em already, and will be quite
acceptable."
All was done as Captain Jorgan directed. Punctually at two o'clock the
young fisherman appeared with his knapsack at his back; and punctually at
two o'clock the captain jerked away the last feather-end of his cigar.
"Let me carry your baggage, Captain Jorgan; I can easily take it with
mine."
"Thank'ee," said the captain. "I'll carry it myself. It's only a comb."
They climbed out of the village, and paused among the trees and fern on
the summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look down at the
beautiful sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a resounding slap, and
cried, "Never knew such a right thing in all my life!"--and ran away.
The cause of this abrupt retirement on the part of the captain was little
Kitty among the trees. The captain went out of sight and waited, and
kept out of sight and waited, until it occurred to him to beguile the
time with another cigar. He lighted it, and smoked it out, and still he
was out of sight and waiting. He stole within sight at last, and saw the
lovers, with their arms entwined and their bent heads touching, moving
slowly among the trees. It was the golden time of the afternoon then,
and the captain said to himself, "Golden sun, golden sea, golden sails,
golden leaves, golden love, golden youth,--a golden state of things
altogether!"
Nevertheless the captain found it necessary to hail his young companion
before going out of sight again. In a few moments more he came up and
they began their journey.
"That still young woman with the fatherless child," said Captain Jorgan,
as they fell into step, "didn't throw her words away; but good honest
words are never thrown away. And now that I am conveying you off from
that tender little thing that loves, and relies, and hopes, I feel just
as if I was the snarling crittur in the picters, with the tight legs, the
long nose, and the feather in his cap, the tips of whose moustaches get
up nearer to his eyes the wickeder he gets."
The young fisherman knew nothing of Mephistopheles; but he smiled when
the captain stopped to double himself up an
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