"An hour after midnight you must put me on board -----'s boat, she'll be abroad. They'll run a light to the masthead, for which you'll steer. You're a good hand at the helm in a dark night and a rough sea," was the reply. "How, if I will not?" "Then--_your life or mine!"_ They sprang to their feet simultaneously, and an immediate encounter seemed inevitable. "Psha!" said the Fisher, sinking on his seat, "what madness this is! I was a thought warm with the liquor, and the recollections of past times were rising on my memory. Think nothing of it. I heard those words once before," and he ground his teeth in rage--"Yes, once--but in a shriller voice than your's! Sometimes, too, the bastard rises to my view; and then I smite him so--bah! give us another basin-full!" He stuck short at vacancy, snatched the beverage from the stranger, and drank it off. "An hour after midnight, said ye?" "Ay--you'll see no bastards then!" "Worse--may be--worse!" muttered the Fisher, sinking into abstraction, and glaring wildly on the flickering embers before him. "Why, how's this?" said the stranger. "Are your senses playing bo-peep with the ghost of some pigeon-livered coast captain, eh? Come, take another pull at the keg, to clear your head-lights, and tell us a bit of your ditty." The Fisher took another draught, and proceeded-- "About five-and-twenty years ago, a stranger came to this hut--may the curse of God annihilate him!--" "Amen to that," said the young man. "He brought with him a boy and a girl, a purse of gold, and ---- the arch fiend's tongue, to tempt me! Well, it was to take these children out to sea--upset the boat--and lose them!"-- "And you did so!" interrupted the stranger.