"Eh? I got a note from Wilkins, as it happens." Bill Adams took off his tarpaulin hat, and extracted a paper from the lining of the crown. "He passed it down to me this mornin' as I pushed off from the ship. Said I was to keep it, an' maybe I'd find it useful. I wondered what he meant at the time, me takin' no particular truck with pursers ashore. . . . It crossed my mind as I'd heard he meant to get married, and maybe he wanted me to stand best man at the weddin'. W'ich I didn' open the note at the time; not likin' to refuse him, after he'd behaved so well to me." "Pass it over," commanded Mr. Jope. He took the paper and unfolded it, but either the light was dim within the store, or the handwriting hard to decipher. "Would your Reverence read it out for us?" Parson Spettigew carried the paper to the doorway. He read its contents aloud, and slowly: To Mr. Bill Adams, Capt. of the Fore-top, H.M.S. _Vesuvius_. Sir,--It was a dummy Capt. Crang buried. We cast the late E. Tonkin overboard the second night in lat. 46/30, long. 7/15, or thereabouts. By which time the feeling aboard had cooled down and it seemed a waste of good spirit. The rum you paid for is good rum. Hoping that you and Mr. Jope will find a use for it, Your obedient servant, S. Wilkins. There was a long pause, through which Mr. Adams could be heard breathing hard. "But what are we to do with it?" asked Mr. Jope, scratching his head in perplexity. "Drink it. Wot else?" "But where?" "Oh," said Mr. Adams, "anywhere!" "That's all very well," replied his friend. "You never had no property, an' don't know its burdens. We'll have to hire a house for this, an' live there till it's finished." II. THE MULTIPLYING CELLAR. St. Dilp by Tamar has altered little in a hundred years. As it stands to-day, embowered in cherry-trees, so (or nearly so) it stood on that warm afternoon in the early summer of 1807, when two weather-tanned seamen of His Majesty's Fleet came along its fore street with a hand-barrow and a huge cask very cunningly lashed thereto. On their way they eyed the cottages and gardens to right and left with a lively curiosity; but "Lord, Bill," said the shorter seaman, misquoting Wordsworth unawares, "the werry houses look asleep!" At the "Punch-Bowl" Inn, kept by J. Coyne, they halted by silent consent. Mr. William Adams, who had been trundling the barrow, set it down, and Mr. Benjamin Jope--whose good-natured face would have recommended him anywhere--walked into the drinking-parlour and rapped on the table. This brought to him the innkeeper's daughter, Miss Elizabeth, twenty years old and comely. "What can I do for you, sir?" she asked. "Two pots o' beer, first-along," said Mr. Jope. "Two?" "I got a shipmate outside." Miss Elizabeth fetched the two pots.