"Ay, drinking cups of a rare make. The last voyage but one of _The Reformation_ we fell in with a ship and would have boarded her peaceably, as the crew were for letting us, but the captain and mate made a fight for it and cost me two of our best men. So angered was I by their obstinacy, I vowed if we won I'd have their skulls made into drinking cups, and here they are with the silver rims round 'em fashioned by a smith on board from a roll of silver on the ship. See, I'll take the captain, and you shall drink from the mate. Now give us a toast." Huntoon paled and his heart thumped against his ribs, but he kept saying to himself, "Yes, Peggy, I will do it. I promised you, and I must not fail." At length, grasping the ghastly cup, he raised it and in a voice of strained gayety cried out,-- "Here's to _The Reformation_! She's a gallant vessel, as this day's work has proved." "Ay, that she is, and fit to gladden the heart of any sailor in Christendom." "Were you bred to the sea?" "Not I." "That's strange. You walk the deck as if you had had sea legs on since you gave up going on all fours." "Ay, but that comes of natural bent and brains. Give a man brains enough and he can be anything from an admiral to a bishop. Now there was a time when I had thoughts of being a bishop myself." "You?" "Oh, you may smile, and I own there's not much in the cut of my jib to suggest its being made of the cloth, and this ring I wear being taken from the finger of a corpse in a merchantman would scarce do duty for the Episcopal symbol; but for all that I speak truth." "And what changed your purpose?" "What always changes a man's purpose? A woman. Here, pass over that Madeira. Do you know, I have more than half a mind to tell you the whole story." "Should I not feel honored by the confidence?" "Well you may, for I've never yet told it to any one; but the sight of that girl and you in love with her--oh, never mind coloring up like that. I knew it the moment you set foot on the ship--the sight of you two, I say, brings it all back." "You were in love once?" "Ay, that I was, as deep as you or any other fool." "Was the girl English?" "Ay, and a tall, straight, handsome girl as ever you saw, in those days,--far handsomer than her sister, who is and always was a weakling, with no more expression than a basin of hasty pudding." "She is living, then?" For answer Ingle pointed with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Kent Fort. "Here, in Maryland?" Ingle lurched half way across the table, and putting his hand to the side of his mouth whispered a name. "No!" exclaimed Huntoon. "Ay!" then jealously, "Perhaps you think she's too good for me?" Huntoon thought it prudent to evade the question by another. "Did you ever tell your love?" "I tried to, and more than once, but I could never get her to listen. Curse the pride of those Brents!" "They _are_ proud," Huntoon assented.