ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

By the time Reuben May entered the little town of Looe he had come to a decision about his movements and how he should carry out his plan of getting back to London.  Not by going with Captain Triggs, for the monotonous inaction of a sailing voyage would now be insupportable to him, but by walking as far as he could, and now and then, whenever it was possible, endeavoring to get a cheap lift on the road.  His first step must therefore be to inform Triggs of his decision, and to do this he must get back to Plymouth, a distance from Looe of some fifteen or sixteen miles.

In going through Looe that morning he had stopped for a few minutes at a small inn which stood not far from the beach; and having now crossed the river which divides West from East Looe, he began looking about for this house, intending to get some refreshments, to rest for an hour or so, and then proceed on his journey.

Already the town-clock was striking six, and Reuben calculated that if he started between nine and ten he should have time to take another good rest on the road—­which he had already once that day traversed—­and reach Plymouth Barbican, where the Mary Jane lay, by daybreak.

The inn found, he ordered his meal and informed the landlady of his intention.

“Why, do ‘ee stop here till mornin’, then,” exclaimed the large-hearted Cornish woman.  “If ‘tis the matter o’ the money,” she added, eying him critically, “that’s hinderin’ ’ee from it, it needn’t to, for I’ll see us don’t have no quarrel ‘bout the price o’ the bed.”

Reuben assured her that choice, not necessity, impelled his onward footsteps; and, thus satisfied, she bade him “Take and lie down on the settle there inside the bar-parlor; for,” she added, “’less ’tis the sergeant over fra Liskeard ’tain’t likely you’ll be disturbed no ways; and I shall be in and out to see you’m all right.”

Reuben stretched himself out, and, overcome by the excitement and fatigue of the day, was soon asleep and dreaming of those happier times when he and Eve had walked as friends together.  Suddenly some one seemed to speak her name, and though the name at once wove itself into the movement of the dream, the external sound had aroused the sleeper, and he opened his eyes to see three men sitting near talking over their grog.

With just enough consciousness to allow of his noticing that one was a soldier and the other two were sailors, Reuben looked for a minute, then closed his eyes, and was again sinking back into sleep when the name of Eve was repeated, and this time with such effect that all Reuben’s senses seemed to quicken into life, and, cautiously opening his eyes, so as to look without being observed, he saw that it was the soldier who was speaking.

“Young chap, thinks I,” he was saying, “you little fancy there’s one so near who’s got your sweetheart’s seal dangling to his fob;” and with an air of self-satisfied vanity he held out for inspection a curious little seal which Reuben at once recognized as the same which he himself had given to Eve.