“Perhaps she won’t like your being a common sailor, Dennis,” I had said, “and you know Alister and I shall quite understand about it.  We know well enough what a true mate you’ve been to us, and Alister was talking to me about it last night.  He said he didn’t like to say anything to you, as he wouldn’t take the liberty of alluding to the young lady, but he’s quite sure she won’t like it, and I think so too.”

I said more than I might otherwise have done, because I was very much impressed by Alister’s unusual vehemence on the subject.  He seldom indeed said a word that was less than a boast of Scotland in general, and Aberdeenshire in particular, but on this occasion it had burst forth that though he had been little “in society” in his native country, he had “seen enough to know that a man would easier live down a breach of a’ the ten commandments than of any three of its customs.”  And when I remembered for my own part, how fatal in my own neighbourhood were any proceedings of an unusual nature, and how all his innocence, and his ten years of martyrdom, had not sufficed with many of Mr. Wood’s neighbours to condone the “fact” that he had been a convict, I agreed with Alister that Dennis ought not to risk the possible ill effects of what, as he said, had a ne’er-do-weel, out-at-elbows, or, at last and least, an uncommon look about it; and that having resumed his proper social position, our Irish comrade would be wise to keep it in the eyes he cared most to please.

“Alister has a fine heart,” said Dennis, “but you may tell him I told her,” and he paused.

“What did she say?” I asked anxiously.

“She said,” answered Dennis slowly, “that she’d small belief that a girl could tell if a man were true or no by what he seemed as a lover, but there was something to be done in the way of judging of his heart by seeing if he was kind with his kith and faithful to his friends.”

It took me two or three revolutions of my brain to perceive how this answer bore upon the question, and when I repeated it to Alister, his comment was almost as enigmatical.

“A man,” he said sententiously, “that has been blessed with a guid mother, and that gives the love of his heart to a guid woman, may aye gang through the ills o’ this life like the children of Israel through the Red Sea, with a wall on’s right hand and a wall on’s left.”

But it was plain to be seen that the young lady approved of Dennis O’Moore’s resolve, when she made us three scarlet night-caps for deck-wear, with a tiny shamrock embroidered on the front of each.