If William had but possessed a sweet and tuneful voice (often a gift found in the most depraved natures), and if I had been able to borrow a harmonium on wheels, I would not, even now, have despaired of converting the whole island in the course of the week.  As remarkable feats have been performed, with equal alacrity, by precious Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and I am informed that expeditious conversions are by no means infrequent among politicians.  But it was vain to think of this resource, as William had no voice, and knew no hymns, while I had no means of access to a perambulating harmonium.

“I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” said Bludger; “I have a notion.”

“Name it, William,” I replied, my heart and manner softened by community in suffering and terror.

“Well, if I were you, sir, I would not go home to-night at all; I’d stop where you are.  The beggars won’t find you, let them hunt as they like; they daren’t come near this place, bless you, it’s an ’Arnt;” by which he meant that it was haunted.

“Well,” said I, “but how should we be any better off to-morrow morning?”

“That’s just it, sir,” said Bludger.  “We’ll be up with the first stroke of dawn, nip down to the harbour, get on board a boat, and be off before any of them are stirring.”

“But, even if we manage to secure a boat,” I said, “what about provisions, and where are we to sail for?”

“Oh, never mind that,” said Bill; “we can’t be worse off than we are, and I’ll slip out to-night, and lay in some prog in the town.  Also some grog, if I can lay my hands on it,” he added, with an unholy smile.

“No, William,” I murmured; “no grog; our lives depend on our sobriety.”

“Always a-preaching, the old tub-thumper,” I heard William say to himself; but he made no further reference to the subject.

It was now quite dark, and we lay whispering, in the damp hollow under the great stone.  Our plan was to crawl away at the first blush of dawn, when men generally sleep most soundly; that William should enter one of the unguarded houses (for these people never stole, and did not know the meaning of the word “thief"), that he should help himself to provisions, and that meanwhile I should have a boat ready to start in the harbour.

This larcenous but inevitable programme we carried out, after waiting through dreadful hours of cold and shivering anxiety.  Every cry of a night bird from the marsh or the wood sent my heart into my mouth.  I felt inconceivably mean and remorseful, my vanity having received a dreadful shock from the discovery that, far from being a god, I was to be a kind of burnt-offering.

At last the east grew faintly grey, and we started, not keeping together, but Bludger marching cautiously in my rear, at a considerable distance.  We only met one person, a dissipated young man, who, I greatly fear, had been paying his court to a shepherdess in the hills.  When he shouted a challenge, I replied, Erastes eimi, which means, I am sorry to say, “I am a lover,” and implied that I, also, had been engaged in low intrigue.  “Farewell, with good fortune,” he replied, and went on his way, singing some catch about Amaryllis, who, I presume, was the object of his unhallowed attentions.