hs
of a man determined to grant none.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Tilda, gripping Arthur Miles more tightly by the
hand and hurrying him into a run. "Whatever's taken the couple?"

She paused at the gangway and listened, peering forward.

"Oh, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!" wailed the voice of Mrs.
Mortimer.

"Down, base one!" shouted her husband's.

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!"

"Nay, if you strive--a little more stress, dear, on 'to-night,' if I may
suggest--Nay, if you strive--!"

"Shall we take it again, Stanislas? You used to take the pillow at
'Kill me not.'"

"I believe I did, my bud. We are rusty--a trifle rusty--the both of
us."

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live--" entreated Mrs. Mortimer.

"What's all this, you two?" demanded Tilda, springing down the cabin
steps and hurling herself between them.

"Hullo! Come in!" answered Mr. Mortimer genially. "This? Well, I hope
it is an intellectual treat. I have always looked upon Mrs. Mortimer's
Desdemona as such, even at rehearsal."

CHAPTER XI.

THE "STRATFORD-ON-AVON"

"_Day after day, day after day
We stuck._"--COLERIDGE,
Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Well, and 'ow did the performance go off?"

When Tilda awoke at seven o'clock next morning, the _Success to
Commerce_ had made three good miles in the cool of the dawn, and come to
anchor again (so to speak) outside the gates of Knowsley top lock,
where, as Sam Bossom explained later, the canal began to drop from its
summit level. Six locks, set pretty close together, here formed a
stairway for its descent, and Sam would hear no word of breakfast until
they had navigated the whole flight.

The work was laborious, and cost him the best part of an hour. For he
had to open and shut each pair of gates single-handed, using a large
iron key to lift and close the sluices; and, moreover, Mr. Mortimer,
though he did his best, was inexpert at guiding the boat into the
lock-chamber and handling her when there. A dozen times Sam had to call
to him to haul closer down towards the bottom gates and avoid fouling
his rudder.

The children watched the whole operation from shore, now and then
lending their small weight to push open the long gate-beams. 'Dolph,
too, watched from shore; suspiciously at first, afterwards with a
studied air of boredom, which he relieved by affecting, whenever the
heel of a stern-post squeaked in its quoin, to mistake it for a rat--an