This is spoken to a group of Sea-Titans, who are sitting about on the pier-way behind him, in red caps, blue jackets, striped jerseys, bright brown trousers, and all the picturesque comfort of a fisherman’s costume, superintending the mending of a boat.

Up jump half-a-dozen off the logs and baulkings, where they have been squatting, doubled up knee to nose, after the fashion of their class, and a volley of execrations, like a storm of grape, almost blows the two offenders off the wall.  The bolder, however, lingers, anathematising in turn; whereon a black-bearded youth, some six feet four in height, catches up an oar, makes a sweep at the shins of the lad above his head, and brings him writhing down upon the upper pier-way, whence he walks off howling, and muttering threats of “taking the law.”  In vain;—­there is not a magistrate within ten miles; and custom, Lynch-law, and the coast-guard lieutenant, settle all matters in Aberalva town, and do so easily enough; for the petty crimes which fill our gaols are all unknown among those honest Vikings’ sons; and any man who covets his neighbour’s goods, instead of stealing them has only to go and borrow them, on condition, of course, of lending in his turn.

“What’s that collier-lad hollering about, Captain Willis?” asks Mr. Tardrew, steward to Lord Scoutbush, landlord of Aberalva, as he comes up to the old man.

“Gentleman Jan cut him over, for pelting the schoolmistress below here.”

“Serve him right; he’ll have to cut over that curate next, I reckon.”

“Oh, Mr. Tardrew, don’t you talk so; the young gentleman is as kind a man as I ever saw, and comes in and out of our house like a lamb.”

“Wolf in sheep’s clothing,” growls Tardrew.

“What d’ye think he says to me last week?  Wanted to turn the schoolmistress out of her place because she went to chapel sometimes.”

“I know, I know,” replied Willis, in the tone of a man who wished to avoid a painful subject.  “And what did you answer, then, Mr. Tardrew?”

“I told him he might if he liked; but he’d make the place too hot to hold him, if he hadn’t done it already, with his bowings and his crossings, and his chantings, and his Popish Gregories,—­and tells one he’s no Papist; called him Pope Gregory himself.  What do we want with popes’ tunes here, instead of the Old Hundredth and Martyrdom?  I should like to see any Pope of the lot make a tune like them.”

Captain Willis listened with a face half sad, half slily amused.  He and Tardrew were old friends; being the two most notable persons in the parish, save Jones the lieutenant, Heale the doctor, and another gentleman, of whom we shall speak presently.  Both of them too, were thorough-going Protestants, and though Churchmen, walked sometimes into the Brianite Chapel of an afternoon, and thought it no sin.  But each took the curate’s “Puseyism” in a different way, being two men as unlike each other as one could well find.