ef outline, Haco said--

"Now, lad, you and I shall go have a pipe outside, and then we'll turn
in."

"Very good; but I have not yet asked you about your daughter Susan. Is
she still with Captain Bingley?"

"Ay, still with him, and well," replied Haco, with a look that did not
convey the idea of satisfaction.

"Not goin' to get married?" inquired Billy with caution.

Haco snorted, then he grunted, and then he said--

"Yes, she _was_ goin' to get married, and he wished she wasn't, that was
all."

"Who to?" inquired the other.

"Why, to that Irish scoundrel Dan Horsey, to be sure," said Haco with a
huge sigh of resignation, which, coming from any other man, would have
been regarded as a groan. "The fact is, lad, that poor Susan's heart is
set upon that fellow, an' so it's no use resistin' them no longer.
Besides, the blackguard is well spoken of by his master, who's a trump.
Moreover, I made a kind o' half promise long ago that I'd not oppose
them, to that scapegrace young Lieutenant Bingley, who's on his way home
from China just now. An' so it's a-goin' to be; an' they've set their
hearts on havin' the weddin' same week as the weddin' o' Master Kenneth
and Lizzie Gordon; so the fact is they may all marry each other, through
other, down the middle and up again, for all I care, 'cause I'm a-goin'
on a whalin' voyage to Novy Zembly or Kumskatchkie--anywheres to git
peace o' mind--there!"

Saying this Haco dashed the ashes out of his big German pipe into his
left palm, and scattered them to the winds.

"Now, lad," he said, in conclusion, "we'll go turn in, and you'll sleep
with me to-night, for ye couldn't get a bed in the Home for love or
money, seein' that it's choke full already. Come along."

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

FAILURES AND HOPES DEFERRED, AND CONSEQUENCES.

Now, it chanced that, about the time of which I write, a noted bank
failed, and a considerable sum of money which had been temporarily
deposited in it by the committee of the Sailors' Home at Wreckumoft was
lost.

This necessitated retrenchment. All the salaries of officials were
lowered--among them Kenneth's, although the directors assured him that
it would be again raised as soon as the Institution recovered from the
shock of this loss.

Meanwhile, however, the secretary was compelled to postpone his marriage
indefinitely.

Perhaps the shortest way to convey a correct idea of the dire effects of
this failure to my reader will be to