The only vessel, indeed, that any way approached her was a large brig which, as my friend Woodrow had told me the day before, was a privateer that was being fitted out by certain gentlemen and merchants of Bristowe for work against the French.  The Bristowe merchants had suffered great losses from the depredations made on their ships by French corsairs.  Many a vessel loaded with a rich freight of sugar, or tobacco, or other produce of the colonies, had fallen a prey to the enemy, who swooped out of St. Malo or Brest, as Woodrow said, and snapped up our barques almost within sight of their harbor.  ’Twas not to be wondered at that those who had suffered in this way should make reprisals.

The Sans Pareil had such a fascination for me (never having seen a king’s ship before) that I was only awakened to the passage of time by the crying out of my stomach.  I had promised Mistress Perry, the widow with whom I had taken up my abode, that I would return punctually at noon for my dinner, and now the church clocks (no less than my hunger) told me it was long past that hour.  She would be mightily vexed, and the joint would be burned black, and I neither wished to offend her nor to eat cinders.  So I now hurried away as fast as my legs would carry me, and soon came to the footpath leading to Clifton.

As I turned the corner by Jacob’s Well, I stepped hastily aside to avoid a man who was coming fast in the opposite direction.  He also moved at the same moment, and, as I have often known to happen at such sudden encounters, the very movements made to prevent the collision brought it about.  We both moved to the same side, and jostled each other, and I, being the more weighty of the two, gave him a tough shoulder and well nigh upset him.

“Clumsy h—­” he was beginning, but he got no further, and ’twas well he did not, for if he had uttered the word “hound” that had all but come to his lips he would scarce have gone on his way without my mark upon him.  But he did not say it, being indeed startled out of his self possession.  No doubt he had as little expected to see me as I to see him:  it was Cyrus Vetch.

We both turned after jostling each other.  The impulse seized me to take him by the neck and drub him for his rascally dealing with Mistress Lucy—­and to settle at the same time some little private scores of my own.  But he was in truth so pitiful a creature, and looked so scared, that I let him alone; besides I felt that I might one day have a greater account to pay off, to which settlement Dick Cludde must be a party.

He on his side, to judge by his pale cheeks, expected a rude handling, and when he found that I made no movement towards him, a look of relief crossed his countenance, followed by an expression which at the moment I was unable to fathom.  Then, as by mutual consent, and without having exchanged a word, we turned our backs on each other and went our several ways.