t the weary man shut his eyes again and began to breathe
most audibly. But when the blue-jackets, taking counsel together,
concluded that somewhere thereabouts the man must surely be, and
decided to sleep the night in the stable loft, that they might scour
the country in the morning, the Governor awoke suddenly, saying he
had no beds to offer them, but they might sleep on the benches of the
kitchen.

An hour later, when all Lague was asleep, Adam rose from his bed,
took a dark lantern and went back to the stable loft, aroused the
Icelander and motioned him to follow. They crossed the paved
courtyard and came in front of the window. Adam pointed, and the man
looked in. The four blue-jackets were lying on the benches drawn
round the fire, and the dull glow of the slumbering peat was on their
faces. They were asleep. At that sight the man's eyes flashed, his
mouth set hard, the muscles of his cheeks contracted, and with a
hoarse cry in his throat, he fumbled the haft of the seaman's knife
that hung in his belt and made one step forward.

But Adam, laying hold of his arm, looked into his eyes steadfastly,
and in the light of the lantern their wild glance fell before him. At
the next instant the man was gone.

The night was now far spent. In the town the forts were silent, the
streets quiet, the market place vacant, and on the hilltops the fires
had smouldered down. By daybreak next morning the blue-jackets had
gone back empty to Ramsey, and by sunrise the English brig had sailed
out of the bay.

Two beautiful creeks lie to the south of Ramsey and north of Maughold
Head. One is called Lague, the other Port-y-Vullin. On the shore of
Port-y-Vullin there is a hut built of peat and thatched with
broom--dark, damp, boggy and ruinous, a ditch where the tenant is
allowed to sit rent free. The sun stood high when a woman, coming out
of this place, found a man sleeping in a broken-ribbed boat that lay
side down on the beach. She awakened him, and asked him into her hut.
He rose to his feet and followed her. Last night he had been turned
out of the best house in the island; this morning he was about to be
received into the worst.

The woman was Liza Killey--the slut, the trollop, the trull, the
slattern and drab of the island.

The man was Stephen Orry.

CHAPTER V.

LITTLE SUNLOCKS.

One month only had then passed since the night of Stephen Orry's
flight from Iceland, and the story of his fortunes in the meantime