Till he addressed her, Lydia had remained motionless, first with bewilderment, and then with open abhorrence. She could hardly have seen in South Bradfield a man who had been drinking. Even in haying, or other sharpest stress of farmwork, our farmer and his men stay themselves with nothing stronger than molasses-water, or, in extreme cases, cider with a little corn soaked in it; and the Mill Village, where she had taught school, was under the iron rule of a local vote for prohibition. She stared in stupefaction at Hicks's heated, foolish face; she started at his wild movements, and listened with dawning intelligence to his hiccup-broken speech, with its thickened sibilants and its wandering emphasis. When he turned to her, and accompanied his words with a reassuring gesture, she recoiled, and as if breaking an ugly fascination she gave a low, shuddering cry, and looked at Staniford. “Thomas,” he said, “Miss Blood was going to take her dessert on deck to-day. Dunham?” Dunham sprang to his feet, and led her out of the cabin. The movement met Hicks's approval. “Tha's right; 'sert on deck, 'joy landscape and pudding together,--Rhine steamer style. All right. Be up there m'self soon's I get my coffee.” He winked again with drunken sharpness. “I know wha's what. Be up there m'self, 'n a minute.” “If you offer to go up,” said Staniford, in a low voice, as soon as Lydia was out of the way, “I'll knock you down!” “Captain,” said Mr. Watterson, venturing, perhaps for the first time in his whole maritime history, upon a suggestion to his superior officer, “shall I clap him in irons?” “Clap him in irons!” roared Captain Jenness. “Clap him in bed! Look here, you!” He turned to Hicks, but the latter, who had been bristling at Staniford's threat, now relaxed in a crowing laugh:-- “Tha's right, captain. Irons no go, 'cept in case mutiny; bed perfectly legal 't all times. Bed is good. But trouble is t' enforce it.” “Where's your bottle?” demanded the captain, rising from the seat in which a paralysis of fury had kept him hitherto. “I want your bottle.” “Oh, bottle's all right! Bottle's under pillow. Empty,--empty's Jonah's gourd; 'nother sea-faring party,--Jonah. S'cure the shadow ere the substance fade. Drunk all the brandy, old boy. Bottle's a canteen; 'vantage of military port to houseless stranger. Brought the brandy on board under my coat; nobody noticed,--so glad get me back. Prodigal son's return,--fatted calf under his coat.” The reprobate ended his boastful confession with another burst of hiccuping, and Staniford helplessly laughed. “Do me proud,” said Hicks. “Proud, I 'sure you. Gentleman, every time, Stanny. Know good thing when you see it--hear it, I mean.”