“What! then, you do know about it after all?” grumbled the old man, removing his pipe from the corner of his mouth, an action which represented the greatest amount of astonishment of which he was capable. “Why the deuce did you bother me to spin you the yarn, then? A man at my time of life ain't got much breath to throw away, I can tell you.” “How was she dressed? What had she on?” inquired Derrick, upon whose ears his short-winded host's remonstrance had fallen unheeded. “Devilish little,” returned the old fellow gruffly: “nothing but a petticoat, and what my Mary calls a body--but which I should call a bust--and a sailor's pea-jacket, and that was not rightly upon her, but tied between her and the spar, to save her dainty limbs, poor girl; and it is my opinion that he was an honest-hearted chap as put it there, and almost deserved to have her for himself. But there they were, brother and sister, so _that_ couldn't be. Moreover, she couldn't have got better off than she did, that's certain. Lord, to think that there poor, friendless, penniless, clotheless creature--as I had thought to be almost lifeless too, when me and Sir Robert dragged her in from the hungry waves--should come to be Lady Lisgard of Mirk Abbey---- What's the matter with the man? Hi, nurse, hi! Confound the woman, how she sleeps! Where the devil's my stick?” Mr Jacob Forest's temper was hasty, but he had no intention of inflicting corporal punishment on the respectable female who was too deeply plunged in slumber to attend to his cries. He desired his stick in order that he might smite the battered gong that hung at his bedside, and upon which (besides using it as a gentle indication of her presence being required) he was accustomed to execute an imitation of ship's “bells” throughout the watchful night. Before, however, he could lay his crippled fingers upon the instrument required, Ralph Derrick, who had fallen from his chair upon the carpetless floor, began to recover his senses, and with them his speech. “Don't be alarmed, sir--don't call your nurse,” said he, gathering himself up; “it is only a sort of fainting-fit to which I am subject--indeed I was born with them.” “And you'll die with them too, some day,” thought old Jacob to himself, as he stared with undisguised apprehension at his visitor's white face and shaking limbs. “Don't you think you had better take a little more rum--or stay, perhaps it's that that's done the mischief?” “No, it's not that,” answered Derrick bitterly, as he filled himself a wine-glass of the liquor neat. “I'm better now, and I shan't give way again. But I remember the man that took such care of the woman you speak of, just before the vessel parted; and your mention of it gave me quite a turn. _I_ didn't know he was her brother; but he was much more careful about her safety than his own--God knows.”