“I’ll cut this particular variation as short as I can,” said the mariner. “I have a sister, and she fell in love with Blaydon, it must be six years ago. There was no reason why they should not have married, for he had a good billet and she had a trifle of her own; but the marriage didn’t come off, and the man behaved badly--she told me so when I returned after a voyage--if I had been at home I’d ha’ taken damgood care that the marriage did come off. But it didn’t, and the next I hear is that he has borrowed money from her and cleared off. It was near about three years before I got wind of him, for you see I’d been knocking about the world, first in one ship and then in another. I had put into Sunderland in the barque _Kingsdale_, and there I found a letter waiting for me from my sister, telling me that the man was in gaol but would be out in a week or two, and that I was to write to him and then wait for him at the prison gate, and not lose sight of him until I brought him to her. I was able to do what she told me, for the barque was in the graving-dock for a month. I met him the moment he got his freedom, and we sailed the next day. He wasn’t very willing to come with me, but he never said a word about having been married the year before until we were pretty far out of soundings, and then he showed me the paper with accounts of his arrest outside the church, and of his trial, when he was let off light by reason of the jawing of the lawyer about the poor young wife that was waiting for him to turn his erring feet into the straight path, _et cetera_--you know the sort of stuff lawyers talk, sir!” “I do--I do; I do it myself,” said Mr. Liscomb. “Never mind the lawyers and their tricks; go on with your story.” “I ask your pardon, sir. Well, of course, when I saw that he was married already I had no further use for him. All I could do was to give him a sound hiding with a rope’s end; and a sounder one man never got, though I say it that shouldn’t.” “We’ll pardon your boast, Captain,” said Mr. Liscomb. “Oh, certainly,” acquiesced Mr. Wingfield, heartily. “Thank you, gentlemen. I did my best, and no man can do more. Well, nothing happened until the barque ran on the rocks, and then he came to me and said he was a good swimmer and he would like to try to make up for his wickedness by carrying a line ashore for us. I was fool enough to be taken in by him. He got the line ashore, but then he cast it adrift--when we hauled it in we found that the knot had been properly loosed----” “It couldn’t have become unfastened by the action of the waves?” suggested the lawyer. The Captain smiled grimly.