couldn't deny that Miller Howell was a cranky lot, indeed. So she took
to picking blackberries, as if they was so many hot-house grapes,
instead of being as red as currants, and as sour as verjuice.

"You can't deny it, Rhoda!" I sings out, feeling vexed indeed.

Then she turns round from her blackberrying, and I spied a tear in the
corner of her eye. So I knew what I said was the cause of her hiding
her head, and I held my tongue, being ashamed.

As we was walking homeward, later on, the brace of us tongue-tied and
melancholy as an albatross before a cyclone comes on, Rhoda whispers in
my ear, "Can't you trust a girl's wit? I'm a match for any two of 'em!"

"Right, sweetheart!" says I, gripping her hand. For all that, a notion,
indeed, crossed my brain, "that she who is better than two mayn't be
good enough to tackle three." And so it proved.

Well, mates, it might have been two or three days later on that I
chanced to be in Barmouth, and there, in the porch of "The Wynn Arms," I
came into collision, as you might say, with one Evan Evans, an old
shipmate of mine, who worked on the Anna Maria Sett alongside of me, and
could handle a pick as cleverly as our boatswain the rope's-end. Evan,
indeed, when he claps eyes on me, sings out, right cheerily, "A drain of
grog, my boy!"

"With _you_," I answers, "Evan, yes, indeed!"

So we turns into the bar-parlour of "The Wynn Arms," and he orders two
goes of rum punch, hot.

When we was sat down comfortable, I began to twig, d'ye see, that his
rig was that of a seafaring man. His arms was tattooed, and his kit
looked smart.

"Avast!" I sings out,--"avast, Evan Evans! Surely, you've never joined
the horse-marines?"

"Mate," he replies, giving me a slap on the shoulder, like a true
seaman, "there's a better mine, containing richer mineral than the old
Anna Maria, and that's the open sea!"

Faith, mates, when he spake them words, I mistook him for one of them
land-lubbers who dresses up in seaman's rig, and takes nurses and
babbies out for a run in a pleasure-boat.

Yes, indeed. But Evan soon put matters straight.

"Hugh Anwyl," he says, pulling out a leather case, "this ere holds a
hundred and fifty pounds, beside gold and silver."

"Take care of it, Evan, then," says I--for I knew he was a light-headed
sort of craft; "or," says I, "your master will be pulling of you up on
account of losing his moneys, indeed."

"Master!" he sings out, with a roar of