"My lad," said Geoffrey, "you are deceived. Never will you be a colonist. Once you are in that ship which is lying off the Marshes, you will go to the colonies, it is true, but not as you think. Instead, as an indented sla----" "For Heaven's sake," whispered Granger, "do not ruin my last chance of a livelihood. I have been ruined once, and--I was innocent. Have some mercy." For a moment the captain of the _Mignonne_ looked at him coldly, contemptuously, as an honourable man looked in those days at a crimp, even though he did not hesitate to avail himself of his services in the cause of his duty; as, in those and these days, too, an honourable man looks at one whom he knows to have been disgraced; then, scarcely understanding what secret feeling moved him, he murmured to Granger, "So be it"; while, turning to the young fellow, he said, "I cannot spare you for the colonies. You must serve your country against its enemies. I choose you, too"; and heedless of the other's cries and remonstrances, he bade Granger name the price. He took also three others, all of whom he marshalled outside Jamaica Court under the superintendence of the ex-foretop-man, George Redway, and so marched them off to the landing-steps where the boat was to come for him. Yet, as they went along, he was not thinking of them, but of the man, Lewis Granger, whom he had once more come face to face with that day. "Innocent!" he said to himself. "Innocent! he protests. Yet in our eyes, in the eyes of all of us--his brother sailors!--his guilt was proved up to the hilt. But to-day--to-day--there was a look in the man's face--a tone in his voice--oh! my God, if, after all, it were so! If it were so! Then, indeed, has Fortune been his foe!" CHAPTER XII. VENGEANCE IS SWEET. During the passage of those eight months from the time when Bufton had fallen into the snare set for him by Anne Pottle and Lewis Granger (who had recognised the former as the singing girl of half the gardens round London the instant he set eyes on her at Tunbridge Wells, they having met before), the latter had more than once encountered his old enemy; that enemy with whom--in a manner which would quite have suited with the ethics of more modern, of present, days--he had lived on an apparent footing of friendship while planning a scheme of vengeance for a cruel wrong done to him earlier. He had visited Bufton in the southern suburb of the town, where the man once known as "Beau Bufton" now lived a miserable kind of life upon money sent to him by his mother from Devonshire, and also upon anything which he could pick up at cock-fights, racecourses, and similar places, he being always careful to avoid the West End. For, like many others who imagine that they are masters of the art of ridicule, he dreaded, winced under ridicule himself, especially when that ridicule had a very substantial base from which to operate, as any that might be hurled against him must have had at this present moment.