t him to bed. 'You are very good, squire,' said the
captain; 'nothing but a sense of duty restrains me. I am bound to convey
the information to my brother that the coast is clear for him.'

'Well, then, fall light, and for'ard,' said the squire, shaking him by
the hand. Forty years ago a gentleman, a baronet, had fallen on the back
of his head and never recovered.

'Ay, ay, launch stern foremost, if you like!' said the captain, nodding;
'no, no, I don't go into port pulled by the tail, my word for it,
squire; and good day to you, sir.'

'No ill will about this bothering love-business of yours, William?'

'On my soul, sir, I cherish none.'

Temple and I followed him out of the house, fascinated by his manners
and oddness. He invited us to jump into the chariot beside him. We were
witnesses of the meeting between him and his brother, a little sniffling
man, as like the captain as a withered nut is like a milky one.

'Same luck, William?' said Squire Gregory.

'Not a point of change in the wind, Greg,' said the captain.

They wrenched hands thereupon, like two carpet-shakers, with a report,
and much in a similar attitude.

'These young gentlemen will testify to you solemnly, Greg, that I took
no unfair advantage,' said the captain; 'no whispering in passages, no
appointments in gardens, no letters. I spoke out. Bravely, man! And now,
Greg, referring to the state of your cellar, our young friends here
mean to float with us to-night. It is now half-past eleven A.M. Your
dinner-hour the same as usual, of course? Therefore at four P.M. the
hour of execution. And come, Greg, you and I will visit the cellar. A
dozen and half of light and half-a-dozen of the old family--that will be
about the number of bottles to give me my quietus, and you yours--all of
us! And you, young gentlemen, take your guns or your rods, and back and
be dressed by the four bell, or you 'll not find the same man in Billy
Bulsted.'

Temple was enraptured with him. He declared he had been thinking
seriously for a long time of entering the Navy, and his admiration of
the captain must have given him an intuition of his character, for
he persuaded me to send to Riversley for our evening-dress clothes,
appearing in which at the dinner-table, we received the captain's
compliments, as being gentlemen who knew how to attire ourselves to
suit an occasion. The occasion, Squire Gregory said, happened to him too
often for him to distinguish it by the cut of