“He has the ring of true metal in him,” I remarked; “and is, I should suppose, a capital seaman?”

“A first-rate one,” replied Mr. Roberts.  “Indeed so high is my father’s opinion of him, that he intends to confer upon him the command of a fine brig now building for us in the Thames, and intended for the West India trade.  He possesses also singular courage and daring.  Twice, under very hazardous circumstances, he has successfully risked his life to save men who had fallen overboard.  He is altogether a skilful, gallant seaman.”

“Such a man,” observed another of the company, “might surely have aspired higher than to the hand of Esther Woodford, dove-eyed and interesting as she may be?”

“Perhaps so,” returned Mr. Roberts a little curtly; “though he, it seems, could not have thought so.  Indeed it is chiefly of simple-hearted, chivalrous-minded men like Mason that it can be with general truth observed—­

‘On revient toujours a ses premiers amours.’”

The subject then dropped, and it was a considerable time afterwards, and under altogether altered circumstances, when the newly-married couple once more crossed my path in life.

It was about eight months after his marriage—­though he had been profitably enough employed in the interim—­that Henry Mason, in consequence of the welcome announcement that the new brig was at last ready for her captain and cargo, arrived in London to enter upon his new appointment.

“These lodgings, Esther,” said he, as he was preparing to go out, soon after breakfast, on the morning after his arrival, “are scarcely the thing; and as I, like you, am a stranger in Cockney-land, I had better consult some of the firm upon the subject, before we decide upon permanent ones.  In the meantime, you and Willy must mind and keep in doors when I am not with you, or I shall have one or other of you lost in this great wilderness of a city.  I shall return in two or three hours.  I will order something for dinner as I go along:  I have your purse.  Good-by:  God bless you both.”

Inquiring his way every two or three minutes, Mason presently found himself in the vicinity of Tower Stairs.  A scuffle in front of a public-house attracted his attention; and his ready sympathies were in an instant enlisted in behalf of a young sailor, vainly struggling in the grasp of several athletic men, and crying lustily on the gaping bystanders for help.  Mason sprang forward, caught one of the assailants by the collar, and hurled him with some violence against the wall.  A fierce outcry greeted this audacious interference with gentlemen who, in those good old times, were but executing the law in a remarkably good old manner.  Lieutenant Donnagheu, a somewhat celebrated snapper-up of loose mariners, emerged upon the scene; and in a few minutes was enabled to exult in the secure possession of an additional prize in the unfortunate Henry Mason, who, too late, discovered that he had embroiled himself with a pressgang!  Desperate, frenzied were the efforts he made to extricate himself from the peril in which he had rashly involved himself.  In vain!  His protestations that he was a mate, a captain, in the merchant service, were unheeded or mocked at.