I’m as miserable a sinner as you’ll meet with anywhere in these parts—­Thomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he’s worse than I am, for he’s the younger of the two, and he ought to know better.  But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave with an eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl.  More shame for me, you young Jezebel—­more shame for me!”

The veteran’s unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him, as he concluded his harangue in these terms:  the last reserves of austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the corners of his mouth.  Magdalen approached him again, and tried to speak.  He solemnly motioned her back with another dreary wave of his hand.

“No carneying!” said old Mazey; “I’m bad enough already, without that.  It’s my duty to make my report to his honor the admiral, and I will make it.  But if you like to give the house the slip before the burglary’s reported, and the court of inquiry begins, I’ll disgrace myself by letting you go.  It’s market morning at Ossory, and Dawkes will be driving the light cart over in a quarter of an hour’s time.  Dawkes will take you if I ask him.  I know my duty—­my duty is to turn the key on you, and see Dawkes damned first.  But I can’t find it in my heart to be hard on a fine girl like you.  It’s bred in the bone, and it wunt come out of the flesh.  More shame for me, I tell you again—­more shame for me!”

The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took Magdalen completely by surprise.  She had been far too seriously shaken by the events of the night to be capable of deciding on any subject at a moment’s notice.  “You are very good to me, Mr. Mazey,” she said.  “May I have a minute by myself to think?”

“Yes, you may,” replied the veteran, facing about forthwith and leaving the room.  “They’re all alike,” proceeded old Mazey, with his head still running on the sex.  “Whatever you offer ’em, they always want something more.  Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives, they’re all alike!”

Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difficulty than she had anticipated.

If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before her—­to charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken delusion, or to submit to circumstances.  Though she owed to the old sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his expense—­even supposing, what was in the last degree improbable, that the defense would be credited.  In the second of the two cases (the case of submission to circumstances), but one result could be expected—­instant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well.  What object was to be gained by braving that degradation—­by leaving the house publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants who had hated and distrusted her from the first?  The accident which had literally snatched