a shot which sent her to the bottom and drowned fourteen hands.  For this, as Wearne knew, he had never received proper compensation.  I fancy the two came to an agreement to set one thing against another and call quits.  At any rate, John was put to no further annoyance over that day’s caper.  As for the preacher, I’m told that no person in these parts ever set eyes on him again.  And Ann Geen drove home that evening with her Phoby beside her.  “I’m sorry to let ’ee go, my son,” said John; “but ’twould never do for me to have your mother comin’ over here too often.  I’ve a great respect for all the Lemals; but on the female side they be too frolicsome for a steady-going trade like mine.”

[1] Drinking-house. [2] Huguenot’s house. [3] Feu de joie.

THE MAN WHO COULD HAVE TOLD.

It was ten o’clock—­a sunny, gusty morning in early September—­when H.M.S. Berenice, second-class cruiser, left the Hamoaze and pushed slowly out into the Sound on her way to the China Seas.

From the Hoe, on a grassy slope below the great hotel, John Gilbart watched her as she thrust her long white side into view between Devil’s Point and the wooded slopes of Mount Edgcumbe; watched her as she stole past Drake’s Island and headed up the Asia passage.  She kept little more than steerage way, threading her path among anchored yachts gay with bunting, and now and then politely slowing in the crowd of smaller craft under sail.  For it was regatta morning.  The tall club flagstaff behind and above Gilbart’s head wore its full code of signals, with blue ensign on the gaff and blue burgee at the topmast head, and fluttered them intermittently as the nor’westerly breeze broke down in flaws over the leads of the club-house.  Below him half a dozen small boys with bundles of programmes came skirmishing up the hill through the sparse groups of onlookers.  Off the promenade pier, where the excursion steamers bumped and reeked and blew their sirens, the committee-ship lay moored in a moving swarm of rowboats, dingies, and steam-launches.  She flew her B signal as yet, but the seconds were drawing on toward the five-minute gun; and beyond, on the ruffled Sound, nine or ten yachts were manoeuvring and trimming their canvas; two forty-raters dodging and playing through the opening stage of their duel for the start; four or five twenties taking matters easy as yet; all with jackyards hoisted.  To the eastward a couple of belated twenties came creeping out from their anchorage in Cattewater.

All this Gilbart’s gaze took in; with the stately merchantmen riding beyond the throng, and the low breakwater three miles away, and the blue horizon beyond all.  Out of that blue from time to time came the low, jarring vibration which told of an unseen gunboat at practice; and from time to time a puff of white smoke from the Picklecombe battery held him listening for its louder boom.  But he returned