on, faster than ever. He passed Bradden Point and Widdy Cove
at the rate of five miles an hour, or thereabouts, then he turned aside
over a stile and crossed a couple of meadows; and after these he was on
the high-road, on the very top of the hill overlooking Troy Harbour.

He gazed down. The frigate was there, as the hollibubber had guessed,
anchored at the harbour's mouth. Two men in a small boat were pulling
from her to the farther shore. A thin haze of blue smoke lay over the
town at his feet, and the noise of mallets in the ship-building yards
came across to him through the clear afternoon. Zeb hardly noticed all
this, for his mind was busy with a problem. He halted by a milestone on
the brow of the hill, to consider.

And then suddenly he sat down on the stone and shivered. The sweat was
still trickling down his face and down his back; but it had turned cold
as ice. A new idea had taken him, an idea of which at first he felt
fairly afraid. He passed a hand over his eyes and looked down again at
the frigate. But he stared at her stupidly, and his mind was busy with
another picture.

It occurred to him that he must go on if he meant to arrange with
Webber, that afternoon. So he got up from the stone and went down the
steep hill towards the ferry, stumbling over the rough stones in the
road and hardly looking at his steps, but moving now rapidly, now
slowly, like a drunken man.

The street that led down to the ferry dated back to an age before carts
had superseded pack-horses, and the makers had cut it in stairs and
paved it with cobbles. It plunged so steeply, and the houses on either
side wedged it in so tightly, that to look down from the top was like
peering into a well. A patch of blue water shone at the foot, framing a
small dark square--the signboard of the "Four Lords" Inn. Just now
there were two or three men gathered under the signboard.

As Young Zeb drew near he saw that they wore pig-tails and round shiny
hats: and, as he noticed this, his face, which had been pale for the
last five minutes, grew ashen-white. He halted for a moment, and then
went on again, meaning to pass the signboard and wait on the quay for
the ferry.

There were half a dozen sailors in front of the "Four Lords." Three sat
on a bench beside the door, and three more, with mugs of beer in their
hands, were skylarking in the middle of the roadway.

"Hi!" called out one of those on the bench, as Zeb passed. And Ze