zed the horses' heads, while
others leaped up into the waggon.

"We are looking for a deserter," cried two or three of them. "Turn out,
my hearty; where are you stowed away?"

I felt, the instant the seamen appeared, that they had come to press me,
but these words revived my hopes of escape.

"There is no one here, my men, besides my wife and me that I know of," I
observed. "You have made a mistake, I suspect."

"Well, we must look," said the men; "we are not quite so green as to
take your word for it."

"You may look as much as you like, measters," said the waggoner; "you'll
find no one among my goods, unless he's stowed hesself away unknowest to
me."

The seamen began to poke their cutlasses in between the packages, and
would undoubtedly have run any one through who had been inside them.
While they were thus employed, three or four other men came up.

"What are you about, mates?" exclaimed one of them, whose voice I felt
sure I knew. "The man you want is sitting in the front of the waggon!"

On hearing these words my poor wife uttered a piercing shriek, and fell
fainting into my arms. She, too, had recognised the voice, though the
speaker had kept out of her sight; it was that of Charles Iffley. The
seamen instantly sprang on me, and seized me by the arms.

"Hillo, mate, you were going to give us the go-by," said one of them as
they passed a rope round my elbows before I could lift an arm in my
defence.

They literally dragged me from my poor wife. She would have fallen, but
the waggoner humanely scrambled up into his waggon, and placed her
securely at the bottom of it. She was still, I saw, completely
insensible. I scarcely regretted that she was so, for I did not at the
moment foresee the consequences. The honest carter was in vain
expostulating with the seamen for seizing one whom he considered placed
under his especial charge, to be delivered safe at the journey's end.

"I don't think as how you have any right to take that gentleman; he's no
more a sailor nor I bes," I heard him say.

"Not a sailor! Why, the man has been at sea all his life till the last
year or so," said Iffley, now coming up, and throwing off all disguise;
"he's, moreover, to my certain knowledge, a deserter from his Majesty's
ship _Brilliant_, so attempt to detain him if you dare."

These words had a great effect on the honest waggoner, who did not
attempt to make any further efforts to detain me.

Generally speaking,