"No. I'll go with you to Tommy-Bill-beg's. Oh, don't mind me. I've nothing particular on hand, or I wouldn't waste my time on ye. Yes, as I say, it's wrong. Besides, Christian, what you want to do now is to marry a girl with a property. That's the only thing that will put yonder Balladhoo right again, and--in your ear, man--that's about what your father's looking for." Christian winced, and then tried to laugh. "Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, absently. "But leave the girls alone. They're amazin' like the ghos'es, are the girls; once you start them you never know where they'll stop, and they get into every skeleton closet about the house--but of course, of course, I'm an old bachelor, and as the saying is, I don't know nothin'." "Ha! ha! ha! of course not," laughed Christian with a tragic effort. They had stopped outside the ivy cottage of the harbor-master, and that worthy, who was standing there, had overheard the last loud words of Kinvig's conversation. "What do _you_ say, Tommy-Bill-beg?" asked Kinvig, giving him a prod in the ribs. "I say that the gels in these days ought to get wedded while they're babbies in arms--" "That'll do, that'll do," shouted Kinvig with a roar of laughter. At the same moment one of the factory girls appeared side by side with a stranger. "Good-by, Mr. Kinvig," said Christian. "Good-day," Kinvig answered; and then shouting to the stranger, "this gentleman knows something of the young vagabond you want." "So I see," answered the stranger with a cold smile, and Christian and the stranger stepped apart. When they parted, the stranger said, "Well, one month let it be, and not a day longer." Christian nodded his head in assent, and turned toward Balladhoo. After dinner he said: "Father, I'd like to go out to the herrings this season. It would be a change." "Humph!" grunted his father; "which boat?" "Well, I thought of the 'Ben-my-Chree'; she's roomy, and, besides, she's the admiral's boat, and perhaps Kisseck wouldn't much like to hear that I'd sailed with another master." "You'll soon tire of that amusement," mumbled Mylrea Balladhoo. CHAPTER VII THE LAST OF "THE HERRINGS" Some months later, as the season was chilling down to winter, the "Ben-my-Chree," with the fleet behind her, was setting out from Peel for her last night at "the herrings." On the deck, among others, was Christian Mylrea, in blue serge and guernsey, heavy sea-boots and sou'wester. It was past sundown; a smart breeze was blowing off the land as they rounded the Contrary Head and crossed the two streams that flow there. It was not yet too dark, however, to see the coast-line curved into covelets and promontories, and to look for miles over the hills where stretched the moles and hillocks of gorse and tussacs of long grass.