Chapter 23 - Page 2

This, however, was the large idea ripening in the breast of Carroway.

"To-night I shall have him," he said to his wife, who was inditing of softer things, her eighth confinement, and the shilling she had laid that it would be a boy this time. "The weather is stormy, yet the fellow makes love between the showers in a barefaced way. That old fool of a tanner knows it, and has no more right feeling than if he were a boy. Aha, my Robin, fine robin as you are, I shall catch you piping with your Jenny Wren tonight!" The lieutenant shared the popular ignorance of simplest natural history.

"Charles, you never should have told me of it. Where is your feeling for the days gone by? And as for his coming between the showers, what should I have thought of you if you had made a point of bringing your umbrella? My dear, it is wrong. And I beg you, for my sake, not to catch him with his true love, but only with his tubs."

"Matilda, your mind is weakened by the coming trial of your nerves. I would rather have him with his tubs, of course; they would set us up for several years, and his silks would come in for your churching. But everything can not be as we desire. And he carries large pistols when he is not courting. Do you wish me to be shot, Matilda?"

"Captain Carroway, how little thought you have, to speak to me in that way! And I felt before dinner that I never should get over it. Oh, who would have the smugglers on her mind, at such a time?"

"My dear, I beg your pardon. Pray exert your strength of mind, and cast such thoughts away from you--or perhaps it will be a smuggler. And yet if it were, how much better it would pay!"

"Then I hope it will, Charles; I heartily hope it will be. It would serve you quite right to be snaring your own son, after snaring a poor youth through his sweetheart."

"Well, well, time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be back; and I never like to rack my mind upon an empty stomach."

The revenue officer had far to go, and was wise in providing provender. And the weather being on the fall toward the equinox, and the tides running strong and uncertain, he had made up his mind to fare inland, instead of attempting the watery ways. He felt that he could ride, as every sailor always feels; and he had a fine horse upon hire from his butcher, which the king himself would pay for. The inferior men had been sent ahead on foot, with orders to march along and hold their tongues. And one of these men was John Cadman, the self-same man who had descended the cliff without any footpath. They were all to be ready, with hanger and pistol, in a hole toward Byrsa Cottage.

Lieutenant Carroway enjoyed his ride. There are men to whom excitement is an elevation of the sad and slow mind, which