grew friendly. The
fisher could not avoid placing his hand before his eyes once or twice,
as if wishful to avoid the keen gaze of the stranger, who still plied
the fire with fuel and his host with hollands. Reserve was at length
annihilated, and the fisher jocularly said--

"Well, and so we're old acquaintance, ha?"

"Ay," said the young man, with another searching glance. "I was in
doubt at first, but _now_ I'm certain."

"And what's to be done?" said the Fisher.

"An hour after midnight you must put me on board -----'s boat, she'll
be abroad. They'll run a light to the masthead, for which you'll
steer. You're a good hand at the helm in a dark night and a rough
sea," was the reply.

"How, if I will not?"

"Then--_your life or mine!"_

They sprang to their feet simultaneously, and an immediate encounter
seemed inevitable.

"Psha!" said the Fisher, sinking on his seat, "what madness this is!
I was a thought warm with the liquor, and the recollections of past
times were rising on my memory. Think nothing of it. I heard those
words once before," and he ground his teeth in rage--"Yes, once--but
in a shriller voice than your's! Sometimes, too, the bastard rises to
my view; and then I smite him so--bah! give us another basin-full!" He
stuck short at vacancy, snatched the beverage from the stranger, and
drank it off. "An hour after midnight, said ye?"

"Ay--you'll see no bastards then!"

"Worse--may be--worse!" muttered the Fisher, sinking into abstraction,
and glaring wildly on the flickering embers before him.

"Why, how's this?" said the stranger. "Are your senses playing bo-peep
with the ghost of some pigeon-livered coast captain, eh? Come, take
another pull at the keg, to clear your head-lights, and tell us a bit
of your ditty."

The Fisher took another draught, and proceeded--

"About five-and-twenty years ago, a stranger came to this hut--may the
curse of God annihilate him!--"

"Amen to that," said the young man.

"He brought with him a boy and a girl, a purse of gold, and ---- the
arch fiend's tongue, to tempt me! Well, it was to take these children
out to sea--upset the boat--and lose them!"--

"And you did so!" interrupted the stranger.

"I tried--but listen. On a fine evening, I took them out: the sun sunk
rapidly, and I knew by the freshening of the breeze, there would be a
storm. I was not mistaken. It came on even faster than I wished. The
children were alarmed--the boy, in particular, gre