right, hale person, clad in
No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of
rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared,
with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in
which he chose to clothe himself--"for the time being," would be his
mumbled remark to any observation on the subject--like a man roughened
out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent
billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome
face, a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist
and never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew.

Seven years before, he had seriously answered, "Next month, I think,"
to the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished
local wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently
in the tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had
entered to buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with
three half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he
carried in the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon
as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The old one and the young one
will be strolling arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The
tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker;
high old times are coming for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It
used to be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,' and so on--soon
it will be next spring, for all I know."

Noticing a stranger listening to him with a vacant grin, he explained,
stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a
retired coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his.
The boy had been driven away from home, he shouldn't wonder; had run
away to sea and had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy
Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not. That old man came
flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost
his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the
devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down
was a letter--a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a
seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about
some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny,
ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London papers for
Harry Hagberd, and offering