seller of foreign silks and droll odds and ends, who
had given him a silver flageolet when he was a little lad. There were
the same swaggering manners, the big gold rings in his ears; there
was the same red sash about the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the
truculent knifebelt; there were the same keen brown eyes looking you
through and through, and the mouth with a middle tooth in both jaws
gone. Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a
privateer, had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and
they had not always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi.

Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always
beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of
her. He glanced round.... Ah, there she was, not far from her father,
over in front of the guard-house, selling, at a little counter with
a canopy of yellow silk (brought by her father from that distant land
called Piracy), mogues of hot soupe a la graisse, simnels, curds,
coffee, and Jersey wonders, which last she made on the spot by dipping
the little rings of dough in a bashin of lard on a charcoal fire at her
side.

Carterette was short and spare, with soft yet snapping eyes as black as
night--or her hair; with a warm, dusky skin, a tongue which clattered
pleasantly, and very often wisely. She had a hand as small and plump as
a baby's, and a pretty foot which, to the disgust of some mothers and
maidens of greater degree, was encased in a red French slipper, instead
of the wooden sabot stuffed with straw, while her ankles were nicely
dressed in soft black stockings, in place of the woolen native hose, as
became her station.

Philip watched Carterette now for a moment, a dozen laughing memories
coming back to him; for he had teased her and played with her when she
was a child, had even called her his little sweetheart. Looking at her
he wondered what her fate would be: To marry one of these fishermen
or carters? No, she would look beyond that. Perhaps it would be one of
those adventurers in bearskin cap and buckskin vest, home from Gaspe,
where they had toiled in the great fisheries, some as common fishermen,
some as mates and maybe one or two as masters. No, she would look beyond
that. Perhaps she would be carried off by one of those well-to-do,
black-bearded young farmers in the red knitted queminzolle, blue
breeches, and black cocked hat, with his kegs of cider and bunches of