can show my 'lines.' I'll give you 'alf an hour to
make up your minds an' settle atween you who's goin' to be the lucky
one."

And with that she left the room, again carefully locking the door and
taking away the key.

Truly were they now between the devil and the deep sea. And no amount of
discussion improved the prospect.

"We _can't_ do it, you know," piteously cried one. "I'll see her shot
first."

"Blest if I see any other way out of it," said another.

"And she's pretty old. She _might_ perhaps die before we came back,
mightn't she?" hopefully ventured the third.

"Oh, stow that! She's not more than forty, and she's likely to live as
long as any of us."

"Well, if you won't allow that _she's_ likely to oblige us by leaving
this world, at anyrate you'll admit that there's always a goodish chance
that the husband-elect may run up against a French cannonball and get
out of the scrape _that_ way. Anyhow, we've come to the end of our
tether. The alternative's ruin. It's pretty black to windward, whichever
way you look at it, but one way spells ruin for the lot of us; the
other, at the worst, means disaster for only one. I vote we draw lots,
and the man who draws the shortest lot wins--er ... at least he marries
the lady," said the cheery-faced boy, with rather a rueful laugh.

"You'll laugh perhaps on the wrong side of your face before all's done.
But, all right. If we must, we must. You make ready the lots, Watty, and
I'll take first draw. Only, I think if the bad luck's mine, I'll slip
over the side some middle watch," said the senior middy miserably.

With haggard young faces two drew, leaving the third lot to the Scottish
boy.

"Thank Heaven!" cried the first, wiping his brow as he saw that his, at
least, was not a short lot. "It's yours, Watty, old boy," he said to the
middy from north of the Tweed.

"My God! what will my dear old mother say?" groaned the poor boy, with
face grey as his own Border hills in a November drizzle. "Promise me, on
your honour, both of you, to keep this miserable business a dead secret
for ever.... Well, I've got to face it. Bring the woman in, and let's
have it over and get aboard."

Watty Scott was a scion of a good Scottish Border family, a youth
careless and harum-scarum as the most typical of middies, but a
gentleman, and popular alike with officers and men. He was about
eighteen, had already distinguished himself in more than one brush with
the enemy, and was looke