silk handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion about his strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his answers.  The bunch of houses there on the shore?  Yes, that had a history.  The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot, different from other people hereabouts.  It was said that one of the Spanish galleons went ashore there, and the men had been saved and had settled on the spot and married Devonshire women, but their descendants had never lost the tradition of their blood.  Certainly their speech and their customs were peculiar, unlike those of the villages near.  He had been there and had seen them, had heard them talk.  Yes, they were distinct.  He laughed a little to acknowledge it, with an Englishman’s distrust of anything theatrical.  A steep cliff started out into the waves, towering three hundred feet in almost perpendicular lines.  Had that a name?  Yes, that was called “Gallantry Bower.”  No; it was not a sentimental story—­it was the old sea-fight again.  It was said that an English sailor threw a rope from the height and saved life after life of the crew of a Spaniard wrecked under the point.

“You know the history of your place very well,” said Sally.  The young man kept his eyes on his steering apparatus and a slow half-smile troubled his face and was gone.

“I’ve had a bit of an education for a seaman—­Miss,” he said.  And then, after apparently reflecting a moment, “My people live near the Leighs of Burrough Court, and I was playmate to the young gentlemen and was given a chance to learn with them, with their tutors, more than a common man is likely to get always.”

At that Sally’s enthusiasm broke through her reserve, and I was only a little less eager.

“The Leighs!  The real, old Leighs of Burrough?  Amyas Leigh’s descendants?  Was that story true?  Oh!—­” And here manners and curiosity met and the first had the second by the throat.  She stopped.  But our sailor looked up with a boyish laugh that illumined his dark face.

“Is it so picturesque?  I have been brought up so close that it seems commonplace to me.  Every one must be descended from somebody, you know.”

“Yes, but Amyas Leigh!” went on Sally, flushed and excited, forgetting the man in his story.  “Why, he’s my hero of all fiction!  Think of it, Cousin Mary—­there are men near here who are his great—­half-a-dozen greats—­grandchildren!  Cousin Mary,” she stopped and looked at me impressively, oblivious of the man so near her, “if I could lay my hands on one of those young Leighs of Burrough I’d marry him in spite of his struggles, just to be called by that name.  I believe I would.”

“Sally!” I exclaimed, and glanced at the man; Sally’s cheeks colored as she followed my look.  His mouth was twitching, and his eyes smouldered with fun.  But he behaved well.  On some excuse of steering he turned his back instantly and squarely toward us.  But Sally’s interest was irrepressible.