two o'clock, and you'll find me smoking a cigar in
the sun afore the hotel door. Tell Tom Pettifer,
my steward, to consider himself on duty, and to
look after your people till we come back; you'll
find he'll have made himself useful to 'em
already, and will be quite acceptable."

All was done as Captain Jorgan directed.
Punctually at two o'clock, the young fisherman,
appeared with his knapsack at his back; and
punctually at two o'clock, the captain jerked
away the last feathery end of his cigar.

"Let me carry your baggage, Captain Jorgan;
I can easily take it with mine."

"Thank'ee," said the captain, " I'll carry it
myself. It's on'y a comb."

They climbed out of the village, and paused
among the trees and fern on the summit of the
hill above, to take breath and to look down at
the beautiful sea. Suddenly, the captain gave
his leg a resounding slap, and cried, "Never
knew such a right thing in all my life!"—and
ran away.

The cause of this abrupt retirement on the
part of the captain, was little Kitty among the
trees. The captain went out of sight and waited,
and kept out of sight and waited, until it
occurred to him to beguile the time with another
cigar. He lighted it, and smoked it out, and
still he was out of sight and waiting. He stole
within sight at last, and saw the lovers, with
their arms entwined and their bent heads touching,
moving slowly among the trees. It was the
golden time of the afternoon then, and the
captain said to himself, "Golden sun, golden sea,
golden sails, golden leaves, golden love, golden
youth—a golden state of things altogether!"

Nevertheless, the captain found it necessary
to hail his young companion before going out of
sight again. In a few moments more, he came
up, and they began their journey.

"That still young woman with the fatherless
child," said Captain Jorgan as they fell into
step, "didn't throw her words away; but good
honest words are never thrown away. And now
that I am conveying you off from that tender
little thing that loves and relies and hopes, I
feel just as if I was the snarling crittur in the
picters, with the tight legs, the long nose, and
the feather in his cap, the tips of whose
mustachios get up nearer to his eyes, the wickeder
he gets."

The young fisherman knew nothing of
Mephistopheles; but, he smiled when the captain
stopped to double himself up and slap his leg,
and they went along in right good fellowship.

CHAPTER III. THE CLUB-NIGHT.

A CORNISH MOOR, when the east wind drives
over it, is as cold and rugged a scene as a
traveller is likely to find in a year's travel. A
Cornish Moor in the dark, is as black a solitude
as the traveller is likely to wish himself
well out of, in the course of a life's wanderings.
A Cornish Moor in a night fog, is a wilderness
where the traveller needs to know his way well,
or the chances are very strong that his life and
his wanderings will soon perplex him no more.

Captain Jorgan and the young fisherman had
faced the east and the south-east winds, from
the first rising of the sun after their departure
from the village of Steepways. Thrice, had the
sun risen, and still all day long had the sharp
wind blown at them like some malevolent spirit
bent on forcing them back. But, Captain Jorgan
was too familiar with all the winds that
blow, and too much accustomed to circumvent
their slightest weaknesses and get the better
of them in the long run, to be beaten by any
member of the airy family. Taking the year
round, it was his opinion that it mattered little
what wind blew, or how hard it blew; so, he
was as indifferent to the wind on this occasion
as a man could be who frequently observed
"that it freshened him up," and who regarded
it in the light of an old acquaintance. One
might have supposed from his way, that there was
even a kind of fraternal understanding between
Captain Jorgan and the wind, as between two
professed fighters often opposed to one another.
The young fisherman, for his part, was accustomed
within his narrower limits to hold hard
weather cheap, and had his anxious object
before him; so, the wind went by him too, little
heeded, and went upon its way to kiss Kitty.

Their varied course had lain by the side of
the sea where the brown rocks cleft it into
fountains of spray, and inland where once
barren moors were reclaimed and cultivated,
and by lonely villages of poor-enough cabins with
mud walls, and by a town or two with an old
church and a market-place. But, always travelling
through a sparely inhabited country and
over a broad expanse, they had come at last
upon the true Cornish Moor within reach of
Lanrean. None but gaunt spectres of miners
passed them here, with metallic masks of faces,
ghastly with dust of copper and tin; anon, solitary
works on remote hill-tops, and bare
machinery of torturing wheels and cogs and chains,
writhing up hill-sides, were the few scattered
hints of human presence in the landscape;
during long intervals, the bitter wind, howling
and tearing at them like a fierce wild monster,
had them all to itself.

"A sing'lar thing it is," said the captain,
looking round at the brown desert of rank grass
and poor moss, "how like this airth is, to the
men that live upon it! Here's a spot of country
rich with hidden metals, and it puts on the worst
rags of clothes possible, and crouches and shivers
and makes believe to be so poor that it can't so
much as afford a feed for a beast. Just like a
human miser, ain't it?"

"But they find the miser out," returned the
young fisherman, pointing to where the earth
by the watercourses and along the valleys was
turned up, for miles, in trying for metal.

"Ay, they find him out," said the captain;
"but he makes a struggle of it even then, and
holds back all he can. He's a 'cute 'un."

The gloom of evening was already gathering
on the dreary scene, and they were, at the
shortest and best, a dozen miles from their
destination. But, the captain, in his long-skirted