The captain stood up, and bowing humbly, replied ’I am ever your servant, ma’am.’

My aunt quitted the room.

‘Now for the tankard, Sewis,’ said the captain.

Gradually the bottom of the great tankard turned up to the ceiling.  He drank to the last drop in it.

The squire asked him whether he found consolation in that.

The captain sighed prodigiously and said:  ’It ‘s a commencement, sir.’

’Egad, it’s a commencement ’d be something like a final end to any dozen of our fellows round about here.  I’ll tell you what:  if stout stomachs gained the day in love-affairs, I suspect you’d run a good race against the male half of our county, William.  And a damned good test of a man’s metal, I say it is!  What are you going to do to-day?’

‘I am going to get drunk, sir.’

’Well, you might do worse.  Then, stop here, William, and give my old Port the preference.  No tongue in the morning, I promise you, and pleasant dreams at night.’  The captain thanked him cordially, but declined, saying that he would rather make a beast of himself in another place.

The squire vainly pressed his hospitality by assuring him of perfect secresy on our part, as regarded my aunt, and offering him Sewis and one of the footmen to lift him to bed.  ‘You are very good, squire,’ said the captain; ’nothing but a sense of duty restrains me.  I am bound to convey the information to my brother that the coast is clear for him.’

‘Well, then, fall light, and for’ard,’ said the squire, shaking him by the hand.  Forty years ago a gentleman, a baronet, had fallen on the back of his head and never recovered.

‘Ay, ay, launch stern foremost, if you like!’ said the captain, nodding; ’no, no, I don’t go into port pulled by the tail, my word for it, squire; and good day to you, sir.’

‘No ill will about this bothering love-business of yours, William?’

‘On my soul, sir, I cherish none.’

Temple and I followed him out of the house, fascinated by his manners and oddness.  He invited us to jump into the chariot beside him.  We were witnesses of the meeting between him and his brother, a little sniffling man, as like the captain as a withered nut is like a milky one.

‘Same luck, William?’ said Squire Gregory.

‘Not a point of change in the wind, Greg,’ said the captain.

They wrenched hands thereupon, like two carpet-shakers, with a report, and much in a similar attitude.

’These young gentlemen will testify to you solemnly, Greg, that I took no unfair advantage,’ said the captain; ’no whispering in passages, no appointments in gardens, no letters.  I spoke out.  Bravely, man!  And now, Greg, referring to the state of your cellar, our young friends here mean to float with us to-night.  It is now half-past eleven A.M.  Your dinner-hour the same as usual, of course?  Therefore at four P.M. the hour of execution.  And come, Greg, you and I will visit the cellar.  A dozen and half of light and half-a-dozen of the old family—­that will be about the number of bottles to give me my quietus, and you yours—­all of us!  And you, young gentlemen, take your guns or your rods, and back and be dressed by the four bell, or you ’ll not find the same man in Billy Bulsted.’