“I flogged! I try to desert!” exclaimed Eldred, amidst a painful consciousness that his indignation at the words conveyed a reproach to his dear, absent son. “No, Tim, I had a good ship, and a good captain, and——” “And went into the service with more heart than Cuddie,” interrupted Mrs. Eldred; “and would not give it up till the last minute, and then were sorry to leave it for home and a dull keel on the Tyne.” “You are out there, my woman. The time in my life when I had the most mind to drown myself was when I was stopped in my way to you, a year and a half ago. You would not have said much of my liking for a sea-life, if you had seen me,—how I raved for the land as they forced me back from it, just when I thought five minutes more would have set me ashore.” “What do you mean? and when?” “A year and a half ago, as I tell you, when I was impressed a second time. I never cursed a Frenchman as I cursed the boat with the infernal gang in it that met us point blank, as we were turning into harbour, and boarded us. Some of the poor fellows with me let themselves out about home. I did not, because I knew it would be of no use; but, to be sure, one or two of them had served as much as twelve years without seeing their families, and my case was not so bad. But I could have knocked the gang overboard with my bundle with right good-will. I hated my bundle as much as I hated them at the moment, because of having to take it back and unpack it, when I had put it up for home. So you never knew I had been pressed a second time, love?” “Knew it, no! If I had, I believe the law would have been altered by this day. I would have got all the women, injured like myself, to go up on our knees to the king’s own presence, and we would not have left him till we had melted his heart, and got his promise to do away the law.” “The best of it is that the law of the land is against impressment; it is against violence being offered to an innocent man in any way.” “Then I suppose there is a particular law to allow impressment.”