cket of her dress. If Mrs.
Vickers had seen it she would probably have been angry, for it was
nothing less than the captain's brandy-flask.

"Drink," said she. "It's the same as they have upstairs, so it won't
hurt you."

The fellow needed no pressing. He took off half the contents of the
bottle at a gulp, and then, fetching a long breath, stood staring at
her.

"That's prime!"

"Is it? I dare say it is." She had been looking at him with unaffected
disgust as he drank. "Brandy is all you men understand." Miles--still
sucking in his breath--came a pace closer.

"Not it," said he, with a twinkle in his little pig's eyes. "I
understand something else, miss, I can tell yer."

The tone of the sentence seemed to awaken and remind her of her errand
in that place. She laughed as loudly and as merrily as she dared, and
laid her hand on the speaker's arm. The boy--for he was but a boy, one
of those many ill-reared country louts who leave the plough-tail for
the musket, and, for a shilling a day, experience all the "pomp
and circumstance of glorious war"--reddened to the roots of his
closely-cropped hair.

"There, that's quite close enough. You're only a common soldier, Miles,
and you mustn't make love to me."

"Not make love to yer!" says Miles. "What did yer tell me to meet yer
here for then?"

She laughed again.

"What a practical animal you are! Suppose I had something to say to
you?"

Miles devoured her with his eyes.

"It's hard to marry a soldier," he said, with a recruit's proud
intonation of the word; "but yer might do worse, miss, and I'll work for
yer like a slave, I will."

She looked at him with curiosity and pleasure. Though her time was
evidently precious, she could not resist the temptation of listening to
praises of herself.

"I know you're above me, Miss Sarah. You're a lady, but I love yer, I
do, and you drives me wild with yer tricks."

"Do I?"

"Do yer? Yes, yer do. What did yer come an' make up to me for, and then
go sweetheartin' with them others?"

"What others?"

"Why, the cuddy folk--the skipper, and the parson, and that Frere. I see
yer walkin' the deck wi' un o' nights. Dom 'um, I'd put a bullet through
his red head as soon as look at un."

"Hush! Miles dear--they'll hear you."

Her face was all aglow, and her expanded nostrils throbbed. Beautiful as
the face was, it had a tigerish look about it at that moment.

Encouraged by the epithet, Miles put his arm round her slim w