oast
ducks and a boiled leg of mutton and plain gin-and-water."

"Settin' yourselves up to be men, I s'pose?" he sneered.

"Not a bit of it," answered Sal. "There'll be no speeches."

She went off to the kitchen, put on the kettle, and made him a dish
of tea. In an ordinary way she'd have paid no heed to his tantrums:
but just now she felt very kindly disposed t'wards everybody, and
really wished to chat over the race with him--treating it as a joke
now that her credit was saved, and never offering to crow over him.
But the more she fenced about to be agreeable the more he stitched
and sulked.

"Well, I can't miss _all_ the fun," said she at last: and so, having
laid supper for him, and put the jug where he could find it and draw
his cider, she clapped on her hat and strolled out.

He heard her shut-to the front door, and still he went on stitching.
When the dusk began to fall he lit a candle, fetched himself a jugful
of cider, and went back to his work. For all the notice Sal was ever
likely to take of his perversity, he might just as well have stepped
out into the streets and enjoyed himself: but he was wrought up into
that mood in which a man will hurt himself for the sake of having a
grievance. All the while he stitched he kept thinking, "Look at me
here, galling my fingers to the bone, and that careless fly-by-night
wife o' mine carousin' and gallivantin' down at the 'Sailor's
Return'! Maybe she'll be sorry for it when I'm dead and gone; but at
present if there's an injured, misunderstood poor mortal in Saltash
Town, I'm that man." So he went on, until by and by, above the noise
of the drum and cymbals outside the penny theatre, and the
hurdy-gurdies, and the showmen bawling down by the waterside, he
heard voices yelling and a rush of folks running down the street past
his door. He knew they had been baiting a bull in a field at the
head of the town, and, the thought coming into his head that the
animal must have broken loose, he hopped off his bench, ran fore to
the front door, and peeked his head out cautious-like.

What does he see coming down the street in the dusk but half a dozen
sailor-men with an officer in charge! Of course he knew the meaning
of it at once. 'Twas a press-gang off one of the ships in Hamoaze or
the Sound, that was choosing Regatta Night to raid the streets and
had landed at the back of the town and climbed over the hill to take
the crowds by surprise. They'd made but a poor