em of his pipe a little curl that had
strayed over her eyes. She was not amiss for looks thus, with her long
eyelashes lying like a fringe upon her cheeks, her lips open, showing
her good white teeth, and the glow of the firelight upon her face; but
her attitude and the innocent, happy expression of her features made up
a picture which seemed to me mighty pretty.

"Where is her mother?" asks Don Sanchez, presently; and Dawson, without
taking his eyes from Moll's face, lifts his pipe upwards, while his big
thick lips fell a-trembling. Maybe, he was thinking of his poor Betty as
he looked at the child's face.

"Has she no other relatives?" asks the Don, in the same quiet tone; and
Jack shakes his head, still looking down, and answers lowly:

"Only me."

Then after another pause the Don asks:

"What will become of her?"

And that thought also must have been in Jack Dawson's mind; for without
seeming surprised by the question, which appeared a strange one, he
answers reverently, but with a shake in his hoarse voice, "Almighty God
knows."

This stilled us all for the moment, and then Don Sanchez, seeing that
these reflections threw a gloom upon us, turned to me, sitting next him,
and asked if I would give him some account of my history, whereupon I
briefly told him how three years ago Jack Dawson had lifted me out of
the mire, and how since then we had lived in brotherhood. "And," says I
in conclusion, "we will continue with the favour of Providence to live
so, sharing good and ill fortune alike to the end, so much we do love
one another."

To this Jack Dawson nods assent.

"And your other fellow,--what of him?" asked Don Sanchez.

I replied that Ned Herring was but a fair-weather friend, who had joined
fortunes with us to get out of London and escape the Plague, and how
having robbed us, we were like never to see his face again.

"And well for him if we do not," cries Dawson, rousing up; "for by the
Lord, if I clap eyes on him, though it be a score of years hence, he
shan't escape the most horrid beating ever man outlived!"

The Don nodded his satisfaction at this, and then Moll, awaking with the
sudden outburst of her father's voice, gives first a gape, then a
shiver, and looking about her with an air of wonder, smiles as her eye
fell on the Don. Whereon, still as solemn as any judge, he pulls the
bell, and the maid, coming to the room with a rushlight, he bids her
take the poor weary child to bed, and the b