Royal ship had
weighed anchor again, but when night fell in the festivities had only
begun. Guns were fired, bands of music passed through the town, and
bonfires were lighted on the top of the Sky Hill. The kitchens of the
inns were crowded, and the streets were thronged with country people
enveloped in dust. In the market place the girls were romping, the
young men drinking, the children shouting at the top of their voices,
the peddlers edging their barrows through the crowd and crying their
wares. Over all the tumult of exuberant voices, the shouting,
the laughter, the merry shrieks, the gay banter, the barking of
sheep-dogs, the snarling of mongrel setters, the streaming and
smoking of hawkers' torches across a thousand faces, there was the
steady peal of the bell of Ballure.

In the midst of it all a strange man passed through the town. He was
of colossal stature--stalwart, straight, and flaxen-haired, wearing a
goatskin cap without brim, a gray woollen shirt open at the neck and
belted with a leathern strap, breeches of untanned leather, long
thick stockings, a second pair up to his ankles, and no shoes on his
feet. His face was pale, his cheek bones stood high, and his eyes
were like the eyes of a cormorant. The pretty girls stopped their
chatter to look after him, but he strode on with long steps, and the
people fell aside for him.

At the door of the Saddle Inn he stood a moment, but voices came from
within and he passed on. Going by the Court House he came to the
Plough Tavern, and there he stopped again, paused a moment, and then
stepped in. After a time the children who had followed at his heels
separated, and the girls who had looked after him began to dance with
arms akimbo and skirts held up over their white ankles. He was
forgotten.

An hour later, four men, armed with cutlasses, and carrying ship's
irons, came hurrying from the harbor. They were blue-jackets from the
revenue cutter lying in the bay, and they were in pursuit of a seaman
who had escaped from the English brig at anchor outside. The runaway
was a giant and a foreigner, and could not speak a word of English or
Manx. Had anyone seen him? Yes, everyone. He had gone into the
Plough. To the Plough the blue-jackets made their way. The good woman
who kept it, Mother Beatty, had certainly seen such a man. "Aw, yes,
the poor craythur, he came, so he did," but never a word could he
speak to her, and never a word could she speak to him, so she gave