was hauled across, and firmly bedded in the
bank. Its passage was then rendered secure by double "life-lines" on
each side; and Mary, supported by her lover and the young fisherman,
safely reached the other side, and was pressed, sobbing with joy, to her
fond father's bosom. The whole party then returned towards Captain
Bowline's house, where the old fisherman and his two sons were liberally
rewarded, and treated with a good supper.

The next morning a messenger arrived from the village, bearing a note
from Mr. George, &c. Millinet, in which he attempted to excuse his
behavior the preceding evening. Mary declined opening it, however, and
contented herself with sending word by the bearer that the writer need
not give himself any further trouble on her account, an answer that was
sufficiently intelligible. But the old commander shouted after the
messenger, "Tell that lubberly _yoho_[2] that if I catch him within a
cable's length of my house, I'll break every d--d bone in his
tailor-built body."

This threat was duly reported to the crest-fallen vender of pins and
bobbin, who settled his bills, and accomplished his escape, with as
little parade and as much expedition as possible; a movement that excited
full as much conversation as his first appearance and intimacy in
Captain Bowline's family; and while one party were confident that he had
only gone to New York to make preparations for his marriage, and another
were equally sure that Mary had, in nautical parlance, "given him his
walking ticket," the story of the accident and Mary Bowline's narrow
escape at the Devil's Gap came out, with suitable additions and
embellishments, and of course the whole affair wore a different face at
once. Old Haddock, the fisherman, was seized upon one evening in a
ship-chandlery and grocery store, that was the usual Rialto of the
loungers in B----, and rigorously cross-questioned. The man of hooks and
lines hitched up his trowsers, and proceeded to enlighten his audience
as follows:--

"Why you see that 'are New York chap and Miss Mary took a stroll down
Jade's Walk as it might be about five o'clock in the arternoon, P. M. as
the newspapers say. Well, they went down Squaw Beach, and so clean away
out as fur as the pint; and when they was coming back, and got to the
furder eend of the walk, the Yorker he kinder shinned up to her, and she
didn't like it, for I knowed all along she meant to have Captain Kelson.
Well, one word brought on ano