dazzled the eyes. He saw only what was within the radius of the light from his lantern. He stood still. There were three great balks rose out of the marsh to the roadway, serving as piers for the single line of rail, and these were braced and girded with other beams a very little way above the ground.

"One-two," said Mr. Shamgar Tapp. Jael heard his words. The wind set inwards. She was hidden behind the third balk.

Then her father set down the lantern and turned up the turf with his spade.

Now Jael saw what he had been carrying under his arm. It was the preserved-ginger pot that contained the sovereigns that belonged to her mother, and were left to her.

Now, also, Jael knew what he was about. He was aware that the place where the pot had been hidden was known to her. He was afraid lest she should go to it, and take the money, so he was removing it and hiding it in a place where she would not find it.

Jael laughed bitterly, laughed loudly, but Shamgar did not hear, the wind carried her laugh away from him up the Fleet.

"And now," said Mr. Tapp, as he replaced the turf over the pot which he had buried, now she can't lay hand on it without my consent.'

66

Then he went away, swinging his lantern, with the spade over his shoulder, and a sudden, dazzling, blinding explosion of lightning showed him to her, mounting the sea-wall, with his back to her, going home.

Then again she laughed, and her laugh was like the cry of a gull-but it was blotted out by the boom and bolt and rattle of thunder that shook the bridge, and made the very ground on which she sat, and the balk against which she leaned, quiver as though the dissolution of all things was at hand.

66

What, Jael, you going a sea-faring?" asked one.

"Ay! Going to see the sights of London," answered Jeremiah, 66 under my protection. Here, Jael, be alive; put your foot there, and sit in the bows."

In another moment they were afloat, launched-to go whither?

On reaching the Cordelia she was helped up the side.

"There, Jael," said Jeremiah. "Slip into the fo'castle crib and lie quiet till we're off." The forecastle did not form a cabin, but a covered space so low that though one might up in it, to stand up in it was not possible. It was a convenient place to stow goods away, as it was sheltered from the wind and from the wash of the waves. Jerry threw in a couple of sacks and bade the girl lie on them.

sit

Oh, Jerry!" she pleaded. "Give me something to eat. I have had nothing for a day and a half."

Then he brought her some bread and cheese.

"We shall be off," he said, "in half a jiffy, and then you have said Good-bye to your old life and How-do-you-do to the new one."

It was as he said, The anchor was raised, the little vessel swung over on her side, Jael heard the pleasant swash of the water parted by the bows, and through the opening of the forecastle saw the grey, dull landscape change. The Martello towers passed before the opening, and the shingly beach with the breakers on it, then the vessel strained and went over steeply, and Jael saw nothing but sky, morning clouds kindled pink and amber and gold from the rising sun.

She lay quietly on her sacks, resting her cheek in her hand, looking out, but only imperfectly seeing the changing view, for her mind was otherwise occupied. A feeling of alarm crept over her. She had taken a step impossible to retrace. She was leaving her home and her father, and her girlhood, and was seeking a new home, and new associations, and-she knew not what lay before her. Hitherto she had been sustained by sense of wrong done her, wrath against the odious woman who had supplanted her, resentment against her father for his indifference to her happiness; but now a

reaction set in, and her breast was full of quiverings, fear and incipient remorse and painful suspense.

Tom May, a coarse sailor, who did not bear a good character, came and looked in, and cut a rude joke, that brought the colour to her brow, and then the tears into her eyes. She did not answer him but turned and looked away from the opening to the planks. Then May went off. She knew he was gone, for more light filled the low cabin when he did not stop the hatch with his body, and she reverted to her former position, and again, with dreamy eyes looked out. Swash ! The water rushed up the bows and fell over the deck, raining down before the cabin entrance. Some of the water ran in, some of the drops were carried on to her lips, and were salt, but there were other drops as salt on her cheeks that fell from her lashes, and came from another sea, a deep sea within, that tossed, and foamed, and threw up brine, and filled her heart with bitterness.

Then Jeremiah Mustard came to the entrance and crept in a little way, kneeling on one knee, stooping, and holding the sides of the hatch.

"How are you, Jael? You do not mind the sea?"

"No, Jerry."

"Glad to be away from Mrs. Bagg, eh? Glad to have turned your back on wretchedness and set your face towards prosperity, eh?"

"I don't know that I am glad," she said, simply, then raised her face from her hand, and laid her hands folded on the planks. Her right cheek was crimson as a carnation, through the pressure of her hand, but the other was very pale. "I am not glad, I am not happy at all. I do not feel as if I were sailing out of shadow into sun, but as if my boat were dipping and would never come up on another wave.'

"It

"That is because you haven't had your proper victuals," explained Jeremiah. is always so, when the meals ain't regular." She made no answer to this, neither consenting to the interpretation, nor disputing it, but she drew her hand across her cheek. "Has the sea water been in?" asked Jerry.

"Yes-there's been a good deal of salt water here," she meant in her eyes, but he did not understand her; "and," she went on sadly, "I think I shall be better when there has been more." Then suddenly she drew herself up from her posture of lying on the sacks in the low cabin, to her knees and so faced him. The light was behind him,

.

brilliant, for the sun was rising, and the clouds were dazzling as they had been when heaven opened in the lightning flash last night. He was between her and the sky, cloud and light and sun, and she could not see his face distinctly for the brightness behind him. His arms were extended clasping the sides of the door, and he was on one knee, the other foot was within the little cabin.

She knelt before him, she clasped her hands and laid them on her bosom. "Jerry," she said, "you mean fairly, truly, honestly by me?"

"My dear Jael," he replied, "of course I do. You must trust me.'

""

"Trust you," she said; "I have no one else to trust. I loved my father, and he has turned against me; he does not love me. He wishes I had been smothered as a babe by Mrs. Bagg. He told me so. He was angry with her because she had not killed me, when my dear mother died, and I was left helpless." Her voice quivered with emotion, her notes were deep, almost masculine, in their hoarseness, the hoarseness of intense emotion.

She recovered herself a little, and, still kneeling to him, looking at him with great eyes full of entreaty, and with the mark of her hand crimson on her right cheek, so that every finger was printed as with blood, she said, " Jerry, my mother died, my father hates me. I have no home, I have no one to look to, no one to trust, no one to love, no one to hold by-but you."

66

Well," said he, "that's right."

"What! Right that I should be all alone? No, Jerry, I am driven from home because

of you. I pray you be just, be true to me. I have but you." Then she fell forward, with her hands outstretched on the planks before him, and her fingers touched his foot, her head sank between her arms, on the floor, and she burst into a storm of tears.

"It's want of victuals," said Jerry; "I'll see if there's a bit of cold pie." Then he got up, and went away, and left her lying thus, with face and arms on the deck, "For," said he, "I can't bear women's tears." Then a great wave rushed up and spouted over the bows, and swept the forecastle and swirled in at the lurch and washed over her prostrate head and extended arms and hands. Presently Jeremiah returned. "There you are," said he. "Here's veal pie and a cold potato, and in this bottle you'll find rum and water ready mixed and not too strong of water. You creep further in, and shut the trap, and amuse yourself with what I've brought. Take my

word for it, Jael, after you've got the better of that pie and come to an understanding with the bottle, by that time the world will look a different colour to you than it does at this minute; and what is more, by and by we'll be out of this nasty sea, and under the lea of the Kent coast and be running into the Thames. If you'd prefer to be below in the cabin, come along, but the chaps are free-tongued, and you mightn't like it."

"I will stay here," said Jael, in a tone of indifference, and then, with sudden vehemence, "Jerry! you mean me fair. You will not be false with me.' She paused. "Oh, Jerry! If after I have trusted you, and come away from my home with you, were you to be untrue, I would-I wouldshe gasped for breath.

"What would you

do?"

Then her momentary energy gave way, she sank forward, with her clenched hands on the boards, and said, "I do not know-I do not know."

She

"So this is London," said Jael, looking round at the masts and warehouses. was not cheerful in tone or in appearance. The vessel had taken a long time creeping up the Thames. She had not been able to remain in her forecastle berth, but had come out, leaned over the bulwarks and watched the coast, and the ships, the pretty wooded hills of Kent, the white chalk pits, the cement works smoking, the steamers shooting past, the long flat of Essex marsh, the chemical works, that made the air poisonous that wafted from them.

Jael had asked no questions; she was not greatly interested in what she saw, for she was occupied with her own troubles.

There were four men on the Cordelia, Tem May, Jerry Mustard, and two others; one of these latter was however hardly to be designated a man, he was a gawky boy.

The

"You're so light," answered May, "I'm afraid of your being blown away."

His tone, his look, his freedom offended her, and she complained to Jerry, who shrugged his shoulders, and said they would soon be in London, and then be quit of May and the rest of them.

At length they entered dock, and Jael looking about her, in a tone of discouragement and disappointment said, "So this is London."

"Ay," answered Jeremiah. "It is down Surrey side, Rotherhithe. You don't suppose, do you, that we can sail up to Westminster Abbey, or Madame Tussaud's, or Buckingham Palace to deliver over our cargo of beans? Come along ashore with me, you have no baggage, and we'll go to an eatingshop and have something good to dine on."

She followed him with some reluctance, and yet with the consciousness that she had committed herself to his charge, and that she had gone too far to draw back. But she could not shake off her uneasiness and growing regret at having acted with such lack of consideration. She argued with herself that no other course was open to her, that she had no other friend, and yet was unable to convince herself that she had done right. The conflict in her mind had worn her, and her face had lost its freshness, and her eye its fire. Moreover, her clothes, exposed to rain and sea-water, had become draggled and discoloured.

She looked about the wharfs, at the men and bales, and the warehouses. Rotherhithe seemed to her a very dingy place, not at all equal to her anticipation of what London should be.

Jerry led her to an eating-house, and ordered dinner. As they sat alone together in a compartment, with a table between them, and a dirty cloth over it, stained with ale and gravy, she was silent for a while, and then abruptly asked:

"Jerry! Why did Captain May say I was light and might be blown overboard?" "How am I to understand his words?" asked the young man in reply.

"He chuckled and looked at that foreign fellow with the earrings, and then at the boy and laughed, and the boy laughed aloud. What did he mean?"

"He was a fool to say it. He showed his ignorance," answered Jeremiah Mustard. "But what did he mean?" She looked

across the table at him, and leaned her chin in her hands, and her elbows on the dirty table, and with her great dark eyes fixed on his, insisted on an explanation.

The young man played with the steelpronged fork set in a black handle, tapping it on the table, and laughed. He was a handsome fellow, remarkably handsome, with curly chestnut hair, and fine eyes, dark as those of Jael, but without their fire and expressiveness. His nose was well shaped, and the mouth would have been beautiful had it been furnished with lips less thick.

"Well, Jael," he said reluctantly, "I suppose he thought you light to fly away with me; but he was wrong, you know. He knew nothing of how you were weighted."

"Now," said the girl, slowly, "I do not understand you."

Neither spoke for a while. Presently Jeremiah began to complain that the dinner was not served, they were kept waiting an unreasonable time, and then explained that the hour was not that at which customers were expected at the eating-house, so that nothing was ready. Jael did not pay attention to his complaints and explanations.

"We'll have something to drink first," he said.

"Jerry," said the girl, "when are we to be married? It must be at once."

"How can it be at once?" he asked roughly. "Our banns have not been called, and if we get a licence it will cost us at least a guinea. You don't suppose it worth a guinea-why that would be eight acres in the Dominion of Canada. And for banns we should have to spend three weeks waiting. We must get to Liverpool and on to the sea before that. We can be married in America, or, if there's a parson on the ship that takes us over, we will get spliced then. Don't bother yourself about that."

"But I do, Jerry. We must be married at once if it does cost a guinea."

"Here!" called Jerry to the shabby woman who attended on the tables as waitress, "you bring a pint of bitter, and be sharp."

This was produced more quickly than the required meat and vegetables. Jeremiah took a long draught, and then passed the pewter across to Jael, who shook her head.

"Well, if you won't, others will," said Mustard, and again applied his lips to the tankard. When he had set it down, he said, "You don't guess what a chance I have

66

That was all fudge," explained Jeremiah. "You don't mean to tell me that you believed I had enlisted?"

"You told me that you had."

"Oh, yes, I did say so, but that is no reason why you should have believed it." "You said it, so of course I believed it. Did you not enlist, Jerry?"

He raised the pewter again to drink, partly to cover his confusion, for her true eyes searchingly fixed on him made him feel uncomfortable.

66

It was a lie, then," she said. "Well," he apologised, "I wouldn't call it that. I had more than half a mind to enlist, and I swear to you, I would have done so had not Argent Smith offered to take me on to the line. I would have liked that. I've tried it afore, and I can drive an engine as well as any one. Besides, it's not hard to run one between Wyvenhoe and Brightlingsea, and back again from Brightlingsea to Wyvenhoe--a chap can't go wrong so long

as the bridge be right. You see the B. and W. has got across with the G.E.R. again, and she's going to set up her own station, and work her own engines, and not allow a G.E.R. man on her premises. By gorr ! She's right. Why should the G.E.R. suck her blood? derive all the profits? The profits must be great, such a lot of oysters travel nowadays from Brightlingsea. Shut those confounded eyes of yours, or look elsewhere. There's an advertisement of Guinness's stout may interest you. Stare at that, if you please, and not at me."

"If you did not enlist, you did not desert?"

bluster.

He attempted to put her down with "You are a fool to ask such a question. How could I desert if I did not enlist? As well expect a man to take off his coat when he has not drawn one on. I wish I'd a paper here You" (to the waitress) "bring me the Daily Telegraph.”

He was given the newspaper; he opened it and held it up before him as a screen between himself and Jael. She put up her hand and beat it down, tearing it in two as she did so. "Now then," said he, 66 see what you have done. You'll have to pay a penny for that. Look at that woman if you want an engaging object of study, not at me."

66

Why did you tell me you

had deserted?" asked Jael with persistency. She was a girl with strong will and much passion, and both were being roused by the falsehood and treachery of the man she had loved.

"Why did I tell you?" he repeated, and laughed mockingly, and held up his hand between himself and her to shut off the level steady glance of her eyes. "Why? If you want to be satisfied, I won't balk of your pleasure. Because I thought you wouldn't take the money unless you had to buy me out."

you

"I am glad," she said, with constraint in her voice, "I am glad for one thing that you are not a deserter."

"And what is that one reason?"

He looked at her, but could not bear her eyes, and put up his open hand again. Her eyes pierced him, shone like the sun into the vile chamber of his heart, and showed even to himself how full of foulness it was.

"I am glad," she said, "because only for that ten pounds was I tempted to take the money."

"But as

I do not want it for her

Majesty, we will spend it in acres eighty

of them."

I

"You have not the fifty sovereigns?" "No, Jeremiah, I could not touch them. tried to reason with myself that I might take -not all, that I never could have takenbut a part, just ten pounds; but-"

"But what?" He had clenched his fists; he stood opposite her, at the table, she with her chin in her hands, and her elbows on the table, looking up at him. His blood mounted to his face, flushed his cheeks, kindled his eyes.

"But," she continued, “I could not touch any of the money. It seemed to me that it would be like robbing my father. I knew that the money was mine-and yet I could not believe I had a right to it against his will. So I let it lie where it was."

66

You fool!" he shouted, with a curse, and struck her in the face with his clenched fist. "You fool! Do you think I cared a snap of the fingers for you! There are other and handsomer girls in the world than you. And now I have lost the place Argent Smith offered me all through you."

He would have struck her again, but she stood up. The blow had dazed her for a moment and made sparks shoot before her eyes, but she speedily recovered herself. She stood up, drew herself to her full height, and tried to speak. Not a word would come. Her bosom was heaving as the sea in a storm. Flashes came and went in her eyes as the summer lightning had come and gone in the sky that night as she watched it from under the railway bridge that spanned Gull-Fleet. Her hands were clenched at her side. Between her eyes, on her brow, was a red mark, where his hand had struck her.

At that moment the waitress appeared with plates.

"Irish stew, by all that is glorious! It is want of victuals has upset me, and I did express myself too strongly. There, Jael, sit down to the stew."

She did not speak; with her hands still clenched, with her teeth set, her brows contracted, without a word she left the eatinghouse.

"Well," said Jeremiah, "I must eat both portions. What a mercy it is I do dote on Irish stew!"