The old patched slippers and the veteran’s existing perplexities happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the relation of cause and effect.  The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service.  Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master called for them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress and completion of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler betook themselves to the village inn to drink each other’s healths at parting.  They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the night, and they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect state of intoxication on either side.

If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the praiseworthy achievements of his life.  But another consequence had sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink.  He had committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust.  In plainer words, he had deserted his post.

The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram’s constitutional tendency to somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept outside his door.  No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to the usual precaution taken in such cases.  He peremptorily declined to be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever a dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep.  Over and over again, old Mazey had been roused by the admiral’s attempts to push past the truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again, when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had declined to believe him.  As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question whether the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the night.  If by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the slippers in old Mazey’s hand pointed straight to the conclusion that followed—­his master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over the stone stairs and passages of St. Crux.  “Lord send he’s been quiet!” muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the bare contemplation of that prospect.  “If his honor’s been walking to-night, it will be the death of him!”