, but try as I would, I
could not get word or look from him. Sink me! if he didn't have the
impudence to resent my being there!"

"It was cruel to stare at misery."

"Lard, madam! such vermin are used to being stared at. In London,
Newgate and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's
House, and the world of _mode_ flock to the one spectacle as often as to
the other. But see! the sloop has passed the marsh and has a clean sweep
of water between her and the wharf."

"Yes, she is coming fast now."

"What is coming?" asked a voice from the doorway.

"The Flying Patty, Aunt Lettice," the girl answered over her shoulder.
"Get your hood and come with us to the wharf."

Mistress Lettice Verney emerged from the hall, two red spots burning in
her withered cheeks, and her tall thin figure quivering with excitement.

"I am all ready, child," she quavered. "But, mark my words, Patricia,
there will be something wrong with my paduasoy petticoat, or Charette
will not have sent the proper tale of green stockings or Holland smocks.
Did you not hear the screech owl last night?"

"No, Aunt Lettice."

"It remained beneath my window the entire night. I did not sleep a wink.
And this morning Chloe upset the salt cellar, and the salt fell towards
me." Mistress Lettice rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed
lugubriously. Patricia laughed.

"I dreamed of flowers last night, Aunt Lettice; miles and miles of them,
waxen and cold and sweet, like those they strew over the dead."

Mistress Lettice groaned. "'Tis a dreadful sign. Captain Norton's wife
(she that was Polly Wilson) dreamed of flowers the night before the
massacre of 'forty-four. The only thing the poor soul said when the
war-whoop wakened them in the dead of the night and the door came
crashing in, was, 'I told you so.' They were her last words. Then Martha
Westall dreamed of flowers, and two days later her son James stepped on
a stingray over at Dale's Gift. And I myself dreamed of roses the week
before those horrid Roundhead commissioners with the rebel Claiborne at
their head and a whole fleet at their back, compelled us to surrender to
their odious Commonwealth."

"At least that evil is past," said the girl with a gay laugh. "And ill
fortune will never come to me aboard the Flying Patty, so I shall go
down to the wharf to see her in. Darkeih! my scarf!"

A negress appeared in the doorway with a veil of tissue in her hand. Sir
Charles took it from her