We all drank to one another.  The captain’s eyes scrutinized me speculatingly.

‘This boy might have been yours or mine, Greg,’ I heard him say in a faltering rough tone.

They forgot the presence of Temple and me, but spoke as if they thought they were whispering.  The captain assured his brother that Squire Beltham had given him as much fair play as one who holds a balance.  Squire Gregory doubted it, and sipped and kept his nose at his wineglass, crabbedly repeating his doubts of it.  The captain then remarked, that doubting it, his conscience permitted him to use stratagems, though he, the captain, not doubting it, had no such permission.

‘I count I run away with her every night of my life,’ said Squire Gregory.  ‘Nothing comes of it but empty bottles.’

‘Court her, serenade her,’ said the captain; ’blockade the port, lay siege to the citadel.  I’d give a year of service for your chances, Greg.  Half a word from her, and you have your horses ready.’

‘She’s past po’chaises,’ Squire Gregory sighed.

‘She’s to be won by a bold stroke, brother Greg.’

‘Oh, Lord, no!  She’s past po’chaises.’

’Humph! it’s come to be half-bottle, half-beauty, with your worship, Greg, I suspect.’

’No.  I tell you, William, she’s got her mind on that fellow.  You can’t po’chay her.’

’After he jilted her for her sister?  Wrong, Greg, wrong.  You are muddled.  She has a fright about matrimony—­a common thing at her age, I am told.  Where’s the man?’

‘In the Bench, of course.  Where’d you have him?’

’I, sir?  If I knew my worst enemy to be there, I’d send him six dozen of the best in my cellar.’

Temple shot a walnut at me.  I pretended to be meditating carelessly, and I had the heat and roar of a conflagration round my head.

Presently the captain said, ‘Are you sure the man’s in the Bench?’

‘Cock,’ Squire Gregory replied.

‘He had money from his wife.’

‘And he had the wheels to make it go.’  Here they whispered in earnest.

‘Oh, the Billings were as rich as the Belthams,’ said the captain, aloud.

‘Pretty nigh, William.’

’That’s our curse, Greg.  Money settled on their male issue, and money in hand; by the Lord! we’ve always had the look of a pair of highwaymen lurking for purses, when it was the woman, the woman, penniless, naked, mean, destitute; nothing but the woman we wanted.  And there was one apiece for us.  Greg, old boy, when will the old county show such another couple of Beauties!  Greg, sir, you’re not half a man, or you’d have carried her, with your, opportunities.  The fellow’s in the Bench, you say?  How are you cocksure of that, Mr. Greg?’