n
to himself--as any one may suppose who considers a spirited young man
of one-and-twenty years of age and a sweet and beautiful young miss of
seventeen or eighteen thrown thus together day after day for above two
weeks.

Accordingly, the weather being very fair and the ship driving freely
along before a fine breeze, and they having no other occupation than to
sit talking together all day, gazing at the blue sea and the bright sky
overhead, it is not difficult to conceive of what was to befall.

But oh, those days when a man is young and, whether wisely or no,
fallen into such a transport of passion as poor Barnaby True suffered
at that time! How often during that voyage did our hero lie awake in
his berth at night, tossing this way and that without finding any
refreshment of sleep--perhaps all because her hand had touched his, or
because she had spoken some word to him that had possessed him with a
ravishing disquietude?

All this might not have befallen him had Sir John Malyoe looked after
his granddaughter instead of locking himself up day and night in his
own cabin, scarce venturing out except to devour his food or maybe to
take two or three turns across the deck before returning again to the
care of those chests he appeared to hold so much more precious than his
own flesh and blood.

Nor was it to be supposed that Barnaby would take the pains to consider
what was to become of it all, for what young man so situated as he but
would be perfectly content to live so agreeably in a fool's paradise,
satisfying himself by assigning the whole affair to the future to take
care of itself. Accordingly, our hero endeavored, and with pretty good
success, to put away from him whatever doubts might arise in his own
mind concerning what he was about, satisfying himself with making his
conversation as agreeable to his companion as it lay in his power to
do.

So the affair continued until the end of the whole business came with a
suddenness that promised for a time to cast our hero into the utmost
depths of humiliation and despair.

At that time the _Belle Helen_ was, according to Captain Manly's
reckoning, computed that day at noon, bearing about five-and-fifty
leagues northeast-by-east off the harbor of Charleston, in South
Carolina.

Nor was our hero likely to forget for many years afterwards even the
smallest circumstance of that occasion. He may remember that it was a
mightily sweet, balmy evening, the sun not having s