with a prospect
rubbish-heap beyond.

"Oh, I'm _so_ glad it's you!" cried Eve, with flushed cheeks and
sparkling eyes, as the fisherman entered.

"Yes, Eve, my pretty. I'm back sooner than I expected--and look what
I've brought you. I haven't forgot you."

Joy beamed in the lustrous eyes and on every feature of the thin face as
the sick child surveyed the treasures of the deep that Lockley spread on
her ragged counterpane.

"How good--how kind of you, Stephen!" exclaimed Eve.

"Kind!" repeated the skipper; "nothing of the sort, Eve. To please you
pleases me, so it's only selfishness. But where's your mother?"

"Drunk," said the child simply, and without the most remote intention of
injuring her parent's character. Indeed, that was past injury. "She's
in there."

The child pointed to a closet, in which Stephen found on the floor a
heap of unwomanly rags. He was unable to arouse the poor creature, who
slumbered heavily beneath them. Eve said she had been there for many
hours.

"She forgot to give me my breakfast before she went in, and I'm too weak
to rise and get it for myself," whimpered Eve, "and I'm _so_ hungry!
And I got such a fright, too, for a man came in this morning about
daylight and broke open the chest where mother keeps her money and took
something away. I suppose he thought I was asleep, for I was too
frightened to move, but I could see him all the time. Please will you
hand me the loaf before you go? It's in that cupboard."

We need scarcely add that Lockley did all that the sick child asked him
to do--and more. Then, after watching her till the meal was finished,
he rose.

"I'll go now, my pretty," he said, "and don't you be afeared. I'll soon
send some one to look after you. Good-bye."

Stephen Lockley was unusually thoughtful as he left Widow Mooney's hut
that day, and he took particular care to give the Blue Boar a wide berth
on his way home.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE SKIPPER ASHORE.

Right glad was Mrs Lockley to find that her husband had passed the Blue
Boar without going in on his way home, and although she did not say so,
she could not feel sorry for the accident to the _Lively Poll_, which
had sent him ashore a week before his proper time.

Martha Lockley was a pretty young woman, and the proud mother of a
magnificent baby, which was bordering on that age when a child begins to
have some sort of regard for its own father, and to claim much of his
attention.

"M