"

"There 'as been improvements," admitted the cook indignantly.

"All oils they was," continued the old man meditatively, "or crains."

"'Ave you ever seen anybody like that?" demanded the cook impatiently.

"Why, o' course I have. I'm goin' to tell you in a minute," said the old
man querulously. "Let me see--what's his name again?"

"I don't know 'is name," said the cook untruth-fully.

"I should know it if I was to hear it," said the old man slowly. "Ah,
I've got it! I've got it!"

He tapped his head triumphantly, and, with a bleared, shining old eye,
winked at the cook.

"My memory's as good as ever it was," he said complacently. "Sometimes
I forget things, but they come back. My mother used to be the same, and
she lived to ninety-three."

"Lor!" interrupted the anxious cook. "What's the name?"

The old man stopped. "Drat it!" he said, with a worried look, "I've lost
it again; but it'll come back."

The cook waited ten minutes for the prodigal. "It ain't Gething, I
s'pose?" he said at length.

"No," said the old man; "don't you be in a hurry; it'll come back."

"When?" asked the cook rebelliously.

"It might be in five minutes' time, and it might be in a month," said
the old man firmly, "but it'll come back."

He took the portrait from the hands of the now sulky cook and strove to
jog his memory with it.

"John Dunn's his name," he cried suddenly. "John Dunn."

"Where does 'e live?" inquired the cook eagerly.

"Holebourne," said the old man--"a little place seven miles off the
road."

"Are you sure it's the same," asked the cook in a trembling voice.

"Sartain," said the other firmly. "He come here first about six
years ago, an' then he quarrelled with his landlord and went off to
Holebourne."

The cook, with a flushed face, glanced along the quay to the schooner.
Work was still proceeding amid a cloud of white dust, and so far his
absence appeared to have passed unnoticed.

"If they want any dinner," he muttered, alluding to the powdered figures
at work on the schooner, "they must get it for theirselves, that's all.
Will you come and 'ave a drop, old man?"

The old man, nothing loath, assented, and having tasted of the cook's
bounty, crawled beside him through the little town to put him on the
road to Holebourne, and after seeing him safe, returned to his beloved
post.

The cook went along whistling, thinking pleasantly of the discomfiture
of the other members of the crew when they sh