into your hostess
here concerning of her brandy? Here it is--which is enough, except for
discontented fellows."

"Eh, Missus?" the jolly butcher appealed to her, and pointed at Moody's
complexion for proof.

It was quite a fiction that kegs of the good cognac were sown at low
water, and reaped at high, near the river-gate of the old Pilot Inn
garden; but it was greatly to Mrs. Boulby's interest to encourage the
delusion which imaged her brandy thus arising straight from the very
source, without villanous contact with excisemen and corrupting dealers;
and as, perhaps, in her husband's time, the thing had happened, and
still did, at rare intervals, she complacently gathered the profitable
fame of her brandy being the best in the district.

"I'm sure I hope you're satisfied, Mr. Billing," she said.

The jolly butcher asked whether Will Moody was satisfied, and Mr.
William Moody declaring himself thoroughly satisfied, "then I'm
satisfied too!" said the jolly butcher; upon which the boatbuilder
heightened the laugh by saying he was not satisfied at all; and to
escape from the execrations of the majority, pleaded that it was because
his glass was empty: thus making his peace with them. Every glass in the
room was filled again.

The young fellows now loosened tongue; and Dick Curtis, the promising
cricketer of Hampshire, cried, "Mr. Moody, my hearty! that's your fourth
glass, so don't quarrel with me, now!"

"You!" Moody fired up in a bilious frenzy, and called him a this and
that and t' other young vagabond; for which the company, feeling
the ominous truth contained in Dick Curtis's remark more than its
impertinence, fined Mr. Moody in a song. He gave the--

"So many young Captains have walked o'er my pate,
It's no wonder you see me quite bald, sir,"

with emphatic bitterness, and the company thanked him. Seeing him stand
up as to depart, however, a storm of contempt was hurled at him; some
said he was like old Sedgett, and was afraid of his wife; and some, that
he was like Nic Sedgett, and drank blue.

"You're a bag of blue devils, oh dear! oh dear!"

sang Dick to the tune of "The Campbells are coming."

"I ask e'er a man present," Mr. Moody put out his fist, "is that to be
borne? Didn't you," he addressed Dick Curtis,--"didn't you sing into my
chorus--"

'It's no wonder to hear how you squall'd, sir?'

"You did!"

"Don't he,"--Dick addressed the company, "make Mrs. Boulby's brandy look