chett. It might have made a very pleasing example of domestic peace
but for one queer fact, which notably altered its character.

The needlework at which women are wont to labour is nine times out of
ten white work or brightly-coloured work. Women are like the best
kind of birds, and love snowy plumage or feathers that are bravely
tinted. But the work with which Barbara Hatchett was occupied was
neither white nor coloured, but black--the deepest, darkest black. Now
there was no cause as yet, thank Heaven! for man or woman to mourn on
board of the Royal Christopher, and there was no need for Mistress
Barbara to deal with mourning. So I marvelled, but even as I marvelled I
noted, as she shifted her position slightly and shook out the black
stuff over her knees, that it was not all and only black. There was
white work in it too, a kind of patch or pattern of white work in the
midst which I could not make out, for the stuff was still bunched up in
the woman's hands. But now, as I watched, I saw her shake it out over
her knees for the others to view, and I saw that the thing she displayed
was a large square of black worsted, and that in the centre were sewn
some pieces of white material into a very curious semblance. For that
semblance was none other than the likeness of a grinning human skull,
with two cross-bones beneath it--just such an effigy as I had seen many
times on the tombstones in the churchyard at Sendennis.

[Illustration: "HELD UP FOR THEIR INSPECTION A PIECE OF NEEDLEWORK."]

It was not, however, of the tombstones at Sendennis that I thought just
then. No; that ugly image in the girl's fingers carried my fancy back
to the place where I had first seen her--to the hostelry of the Skull
and Spectacles--and I fancied somehow, I scarce knew why, that the work
of Barbara's fingers had some connection with her father's inn. Only for
a second or so did I think this, but in honest truth that was my first,
my immediate belief, and it brought me no thought of fear, no thought of
danger with it. I was only conscious of wondering vaguely to what
service this sad piece of handicraft could be put, when suddenly, in a
flash, my intelligence took fire, and I knew what was intended; and I
felt my knees give way and my heart stand still with horror.

The thing I was looking at, the ill-favoured thing that was hanging from
my old love's hand, was none other than a flag of evil omen--a pirate's
flag, the barbarous piece of bunti