dinner or supper, all the time looking forward to the chances of his turning out an active enemy, and not by any means inclined to give him ‘the run of the house,’ however many unmarried daughters might grace their table.  Still as he could tell a rattling story, drink hard, and was seldom too busy to come at a short notice, he got on better than any one could have expected with the Monkshaven folk.  And the principal share of the odium of his business fell on his subordinates, who were one and all regarded in the light of mean kidnappers and spies—­’varmint,’ as the common people esteemed them:  and as such they were ready at the first provocation to hunt and to worry them, and little cared the press-gang for this.  Whatever else they were, they were brave and daring.  They had law to back them, therefore their business was lawful.  They were serving their king and country.  They were using all their faculties, and that is always pleasant.  There was plenty of scope for the glory and triumph of outwitting; plenty of adventure in their life.  It was a lawful and loyal employment, requiring sense, readiness, courage, and besides it called out that strange love of the chase inherent in every man.  Fourteen or fifteen miles at sea lay the Aurora, good man-of-war; and to her were conveyed the living cargoes of several tenders, which were stationed at likely places along the sea-coast.  One, the Lively Lady, might be seen from the cliffs above Monkshaven, not so far away, but hidden by the angle of the high lands from the constant sight of the townspeople; and there was always the Randyvow-house (as the public-house with the navy blue-flag was called thereabouts) for the crew of the Lively Lady to lounge about, and there to offer drink to unwary passers-by.  At present this was all that the press-gang had done at Monkshaven.

CHAPTER II

HOME FROM GREENLAND

One hot day, early in October of the year 1796, two girls set off from their country homes to Monkshaven to sell their butter and eggs, for they were both farmers’ daughters, though rather in different circumstances; for Molly Corney was one of a large family of children, and had to rough it accordingly; Sylvia Robson was an only child, and was much made of in more people’s estimation than Mary’s by her elderly parents.  They had each purchases to make after their sales were effected, as sales of butter and eggs were effected in those days by the market-women sitting on the steps of the great old mutilated cross till a certain hour in the afternoon, after which, if all their goods were not disposed of, they took them unwillingly to the shops and sold them at a lower price.  But good housewives did not despise coming themselves to the Butter Cross, and, smelling and depreciating the articles they wanted, kept up a perpetual struggle of words, trying, often in vain, to beat down prices.  A housekeeper of