ou'll have to make a good wife of me, Zeb. I wonder if you'll do 't."

Zeb followed the direction of her eyes, and seemed to discern off
Bradden Point a dot of white, as of a ship in sail. He pressed her arm
to his side, but said nothing.

"Clear your throats, friends," shouted his father, up the road,
"an' let fly--"

As I sat on a sunny bank,
--A sunny bank, a sunny bank,
As I sat on a sunny bank
On Chris'mas day i' the mornin,

I saw dree ships come sailin' by,
--A-sailin' by, a-sailin' by,
I saw dree ships come sailin' by
On Chris'mas day i' the mornin'.

Now who shud be i' these dree ships--

And to this measure Zeb and Ruby stepped home.

At the cottage door Zeb thanked the singers, who went their way and
flung back shouts and joyful wishes as they went. Before making all
fast for the night, he stood a minute or so, listening to their voices
as they died away down the road. As he barred the door, he turned and
saw that Ruby had lit the lamp, and was already engaged in setting the
kitchen to rights; for, of course, no such home-coming had been dreamt
of in the morning, and all was in disorder. He stood and watched her
for a while, then turned to the window.

After a minute or two, finding that he did not speak, she too came to
the window. He bent and kissed her.

For he had seen, on the patch of sea beyond the haven, a white frigate
steal up Channel like a ghost. She had passed out of his sight by this
time, but he was still thinking of one man that she bore.

THE HAUNTED DRAGOON.

Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale
church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate--where the
graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their
inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck--the base of the
churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax
and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a
well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish,
for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this
belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which
led to this are still a winter's tale in the neighbourhood. I set them
down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by
Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous
share in the