spend, and spent it, too, —occupied the
Marine barracks. The Ninety-eighth Plungers,
together with the depot companies of
the Fourteenth Royal Screamers, had
marched in to relieve the Seventy-third
Wrestlers. There was some thought of
embodying, for garrison duty, in Belleriport
the Seventh or West Swampshire Drabs
regiment of Militia. Belleriport was full of
sailors, soldiers, and marines. Seven gold-laced
cocked hats could be observed on the door
steps of the George Hotel at one time.
Almost every lady's bonnet in the High
Street had a military or naval officer's head
looking under it. You could scarcely get
into Miss Pyebord the pastrycook's shop for
midshipmen. There were so many soldiers
in the streets, that you were inclined to take
the whole of the population of Belleriport
for lobsters, and to imagine that half of them
were boiled and the other half waiting to be.
The Common Hard was as soft as a featherbed
with sailors. Lieutenant Hook at the
Rendezvous was busy all day enrolling
A B's, ordinaries, and stout lads. The Royal
Grubbington victualling yard was turning
out thousands of barrels of salt beef and
pork and sea biscuits per diem. Huge guns
were being hoisted on board ship; seaman-
riggers, caulkers, carpenters, and shipwrights,
were all some hundreds of degrees
busier than bees; and sundry gentlemen in
the dockyard, habited in simple suits of
drab, marked with the broad arrow—with
striped stockings and glazed hats, and after
whose personal safety sentinels with fixed
bayonets and warders in oilskin coats
affectionately looked—were busy too, in
their way: dragging about chain-cables,
blocks and spars, and loads of timber,
steadily but sulkily; and, in their close-
shaven, beetle-browed countenances, evincing
a silent but profound disgust.

Acon-Virlaz had not done so badly during
Belleriport's recent briskness. He was a
jeweller; and sold watches, rings, chains,
bracelets, snuff-boxes, brooches, shirt-studs,
sleeve-buttons, pencil-cases, and true lovers'
knots. But, his trade in jewels did not interfere
with his also vending hammocks,
telescopes, sou'-wester hats, lime-juice, maps,
charts and log-books, Guernsey shirts, clasp
knives, pea-coats, preserved meats, razors,
swinging lamps, sea-chests, dancing-pumps,
eye-glasses, waterproof overalls, patent blacking,
and silk pocket-handkerchiefs emblazoned
with the flags of all nations. Nor did
his dealings in these articles prevent him
from driving a very tidy little business in
the purchase of gold dust, elephants' teeth,
feathers and bandanas, from home-returned
sailors; nor (so the censorious said) from
deriving some pretty little profits from the
cashing of seamen's advance notes, and the
discounting of the acceptances of the officers
of her majesty's army and navy; nor (so the
downright libellous asserted) from doing a
little in the wine line, and a little in the picture
line, and a good deal, when occasion
required it, in the crimp line.

Acon-Virlaz sat in his shop on the Common
Hard of Belleriport smoking his evening pipe.
It was in the back shop that Acon-Virlaz
sat. Above his head, hung the hammocks,
the pilot-trowsers narrow at the knees and
wide at the ancles, the swinging lamps, and
the waterproof overalls. The front shop
loomed dimly through a grove of pea-coats,
sou'-wester hats, Guernsey shirts, and cans
of preserved meat. One little gas jet in
the back-shop—for the front gas was
not yet lighted—flickered on the heterogeneous
articles hanging and heaped up
together all around. The gas just tipped
with light the brass knobs of the drawers
which ran round all the four sides of the shop,
tier above tier, and held Moses knows how
many more treasures of watchmaking, tailor-
ing, and outfitting. The gas, just defined by
feebly-shining threads, the salient lines and
angles of a great iron safe in one corner;
and finally the gas just gleamed—twinkled
furtively, like a magpie looking into a marrow
bone—upon the heap of jewellery collected
upon the great slate-covered counter
in Acon-Virlaz's back shop.

The counter was covered with slate; for,
upon it Acon-Virlaz loved to chalk his
calculations. It was ledger, day-book, and
journal, all in one. The little curly-headed
Jew boy who was clerk, shopman, messenger,
and assistant-measurer in the tailoring department
of the establishment, would as soon
have thought of eating roast sucking-pig
beneath Acon-Virlaz's nose, as of wiping,
dusting, or, indeed, touching the sacred slate
counter without special permission and
authority from Acon-Virlaz himself.

By the way, it was not by that name that the
jeweller and outfitter was known in Belleriport.
He went by a simpler, homelier, shorter appellation:
Moses, Levy, Sheeny what you will;
it does not much matter which; for most of
the Hebrew nation have an inner name as
well as an inner and richer life.

Acon-Virlaz was a little, plump, round,
black-eyed, red-lipped, blue-bearded man.
Age had begun to discount his head, and had
given him sixty per cent of gray hairs. A-top
he was bald, and wore a little skull-cap. He
had large fat hands, all creased and tumbled,
as if his skin were too large for him; and, on
one forefinger, he wore a great cornelian
signet-ring, about which there were all sorts
of legends. Miriam, his daughter, said—
but what have I to do with Miriam, his
daughter? She does not enter into this
history at all.

The evening pipe that Acon-Virlaz was
smoking was very mild and soothing. The
blue haze went curling softly upwards, and
seemed to describe pleasant figures of £ s. d.
as it ascended. Through the grove, across
the front shop, Acon-Virlaz could see little