THE DOCTOR AT BAY.

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comprehend your native tongue. Across a handkerchief, I say, you hear that?" And Tom rolled on at his pills. "I do."

do

"And when I have fought him, I fight you!" And the pills rolled steadily at the same pace.

"But-Sir?-Why-Sir?"

"Because," said Tom, looking him full in the face, "because you, calling yourself a gentleman, and being, more shame for you, one by birth, dare to come here, for a foolish vulgar superstition called honour, to ask me, a quiet medical man, to go and be shot at by a man whom you know to be a drunken, profligate, blackguard: simply because, as you know as well as I, I interfered to prevent his insulting a poor helpless girl and in so doing, was forced to give him what you, if you are (as I believe) a gentleman, would have given him also, in my place."

"I don't understand you, Sir!" said the lad, blushing all the while, as one honestly conscience-stricken; for Tom had spoken the exact truth, and he knew it.

"Don't lie, Sir, and tell me that you don't understand; you understand every word which I have spoken, and you know that it is true."

"Lie?"

'Yes, lie. Look you, Sir; I have no wish to fight--”

"You will fight, though, whether you wish it or not," said the youth with a hysterical laugh, meant to be defiant.

"But I can snuff a candle; I can split a bullet on a penknife at fifteen paces."

"Do you mean to frighten us by boasting? We shall see what you can do when you come on the ground."

"Across a handkerchief: but on no other condition; and, unless you will accept that condition, I will assuredly, the next time I see you, be we where we may, treat you as I treated your friend Mr. Treebooze.- -I'll do it now! Get out of my shop, Sir! What do you want here, interfering with my honest business?"

And, to the astonishment of Mr. Trebooze's second, Tom vaulted clean over the counter, and rushed at him open-mouthed. Sacred be the honour of the gallant West country: but, "both being friends," as Aristotle has it, "it is a sacred duty to speak the truth." Mr. Creed vanished through the open door.

"I rid myself of the fellow jollily," said Tom to Frank that day, after telling him the whole story. "And no credit to me. I saw from the minute he came in there was no fight in him."

"But suppose he had accepted--or suppose Trebooze accepts still ?"

He'll

"There was my game-to frighten him. He'll take care Trebooze shan't fight, for he knows that he must fight next. go home and patch the matter up, trust him. Meanwhile, the oaf had not even savoir faire enough to ask for my second. Lucky for me; for I don't know where to have found one, save the Lieutenant; and though he would have gone out safe enough, it would have been a bore for the good old fellow."

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And," said Frank, utterly taken aback by Tom's business-like levity, "you would actually have stood to shoot, and be shot at, across a handkerchief?"

Tom stuck out his great chin, and looked at him with one of his quaint sidelong moues.

"You are my very good friend, Sir: but not my fatherconfessor."

"I know that: but really-as a mere question of human curiosity"

“Oh, if you ask me on the human ground, and not on the sacerdotal, I'll tell you. I've tried it twice, and I should be sorry to try it again; though it's a very easy dodge. Keep your right elbow up-up to your ear-and the moment you hear the word, fire. A high elbow and a cool heart-that's all; and that wins."

"Wins? Good heavens? As you are here alive you must have killed your man?"

"No. I only shot my men each through the body; and each of them deserved it: but it is an ugly chance; I should have been sorry to try it on that yokel. The boy may make a man yet. And what's more," said Tom, bursting into a great laugh, "he will make a man, and go down to his fathers in peace, quant à moi; and so will that wretched Trebooze. For I'll bet you my head to a China orange, I hear no more of this matter; and don't even lose Trebooze's custom."

"Upon my word, I envy your sanguine temperament!"

"Mr. Headley, I shall quietly make my call at Trebooze to-morrow, as if nothing had happened. What will you bet me that I am not received as usual?"

"I never bet," said Frank.

66 Then you do well. It is a foolish and a dirty trick; playing with edge tools, and cutting one's own fingers. Nevertheless, I speak truth, as you will see."

"You are a most extraordinary man.

to your usual caution.”

All this is so contrary

"When you are driven against the ropes, 'hit out' is the old rule of Fistiana and common sense. It is an extreme bore: all the more reason for showing such an ugly front, as to give people no chance of its happening again. Nothing so dangerous as

half-measures, Headley. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,' your creed says. Mine only translates it into practice." "I have no liking for half-ineasures myself."

"Did you ever," said Tom, "hear the story of the two Sandhurst broomsquires ?"

"Broomsquires ?"

"So we call, in Berkshire, squatters on the moor who live by tying heath into brooms. Two of them met in Reading market once, and fell out :

"How ever do you manage to sell your brooms for three halfpence? I steals the heth, and I steals the binds, and I steals the handles and yet I can't afoord to sell 'em under twopence.' “Ah, but you see,' says the other, 'I steals mine ready made.'

"Moral-If you're going to do a thing, do it outright." That very evening, Tom came in again.

"Well; I've been to Trebooze."

"And fared, how ?”

"Just as I warned you. Inquired into his symptoms; prescribed for his digestion-if he goes on as he is doing, he will will soon have none left to prescribe for; and, finally, plastered, with a sublime generosity, the nose which my own knuckles had contused."

"Impossible! you are the most miraculously impudent of

men!"

"Pish! simple common sense. I knew that Mrs. Trebooze would suspect that the world had heard of his mishap, and took care to let her know that I knew, by coming up to inquire for him."

"Cui bono?"

"Power. To have them, or any one, a little more in my power. Next, I knew that he dared not fly out at me, for fear I should tell Mrs. Trebooze what he had been after-you see? Ah, it was delicious to have the great oaf sitting sulking under my fingers, longing to knock my head off, and I plastering away, with words of deepest astonishment and condolence. I verily believe that, before we parted, I had persuaded him that his black eye proceeded entirely from his having run up against a tree in the dark."

"Well," said Frank, half sadly, though enjoying the joke in spite of himself, "I cannot help thinking it would have been a fit moment for giving the poor wretch a more solemn lesson."

"My dear Sir,-a good licking—and he had one, and somthing over-is the best lesson for that manner of biped. That's the way to school him but as we are on lessons, I'll give you a hint."

:

"Go on, model of self-sufficiency !" said Frank.

"Scoff at me if you will, I am proof. But hearken-you mustn't turn out that schoolmistress. She's an angel, and I know it; and if I say so of any human being, you may be sure

I have pretty good reasons."

"I am beginning to be of your mind myself," said Frank.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CRUISE OF THE WATERWITCH.

THE middle of August is come at last; and with it the solemn day on which Frederick Viscount Scoutbush may be expected to revisit the home of his ancestors. Elsley has gradually made up his mind to the inevitable, with a stately sulkiness: and comforts himself, as the time draws near, with the thought that, after all, his brother-in-law is not a very formidable personage.

But to the population of Aberalva in general, the coming event is one of awful jubilation. The shipping is all decked with flags; all the Sunday clothes have been looked out, and many a yard of new ribbon and pound of bad powder bought; there have been arrangements for a procession, which could not be got up; for a speech which nobody would undertake to pronounce; and, lastly, for a dinner, about which last there was no hanging back. Yea, also, they have hired from Carcarrow Church-town, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music; for Frank has put down the old choir band at Aberalva,—another of his mistakes, -and there is but one fiddle and a clarionet now left in all the town. So the said town waits all the day on tiptoe, ready to worship, till out of the soft brown haze the stately Waterwitch comes sliding in, like a white ghost, to fold her wings in Aberalva bay.

And at that sight the town is all astir. Fishermen shake themselves up out of their mid-day snooze, to admire the beauty, as she slips on and on through water smooth as glass, her hull hidden by the vast curve of the balloon-jib, and her broad wing boomed out alow and aloft, till it seems marvellous how that vast screen does not topple headlong, instead of floating (as it seems) self-supporting above its image in the mirror. Women hurry to put on their best bonnets; the sexton toddles up with the church key in his hand, and the ringers at his heels; the Coast-guard Lieutenant bustles down to the Manby's mortar, which he has hauled out in readiness on the pebbles. Old Willis hoists a flag before his house, and half-a-dozen merchant skivvers

do the same. Bang goes the harmless mortar, burning the British nation's powder without leave or licence; and all the rocks and woods catch up the echo, and kick it from cliff to cliff, playing at football with it till its breath is beaten out; a rolling fire of old muskets and bird-pieces crackles along the shore, and in five minutes a poor lad has blown a ramrod through his hand. Never mind, lords do not visit Penalva every day. Out burst the bells above with merry peal; Lord Scoutbush and the Waterwitch are duly "rung in" to the home of his lordship's ancestors; and he is received, as he scrambles up the pier steps from his boat, by the Curate, the Churchwardens, the Lieutenant, and old Tardrew, backed by half-a-dozen ancient sons of Anak, lineal descendants of the free fishermen to whom six hundred years before, St. Just of Penalva did grant privileges hard to spell, and harder to understand, on the condition of receiving, whensoever he should land at the quay head, three brass farthings from the "free fishermen of Aberalva."

Scoutbush shakes hands with Curate, Lieutenant, Tardrew, Churchwardens; and then come forward the three farthings, in an ancient leather purse.

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Hope your lordship will do us the honour to shake hands with us too; we are your lordship's free fishermen, as we have been your forefathers'," says a magnificent old man, gracefully acknowledging the feudal tie, while he claims the exemption.

Little Scoutbush, who is the kindest-hearted of men, clasps the great brown fist in his little white one, and shakes hands heartily with every one of them, saying,-" If your forefathers were as much taller than mine, as you are than me, gentlemen, I shouldn't wonder if they took their own freedom, without asking his leave for it!"

A lord who begins his progress with a jest! That is the sort of aristocrat to rule in Aberalva! And all agree that evening, at the Mariners' Rest, that his lordship is as nice a young gentleman as ever trod deal board, and deserves such a yacht as he's got, and long may he sail her !

How easy it is to buy the love of men! Gold will not do it: but there is a little angel, may be, in the corner of every man's eye, who is worth more than gold, and can do it free of all charges: unless a man drives him out, and "hates his brother; and so walks in darkness; not knowing whither he goeth," but running full butt against men's prejudices, and treading on their corns, till they knock him down in despair-and all just because he will not open his eyes, and use the light which comes by common human good-nature!

Presently Tom hurries up, having been originally one of the deputation, but kept by the necessity of binding up the three