"It is good of your Royal Highness," she exclaimed in softly modulated, respectful tones, uttered in a measure that gave them a courtier-like dignity, "to visit me in my loneliness and distress. The great Duke of Clarence, sir"--again she curtsied--"will ever be remembered with love and pride by a kingdom whose glory lies in the deeds of her sailors, for his devotion to the sea, to those who sail it, and who bleed for their country upon it." She seemed to listen in a profoundly respectful attitude to the reply of the vision, and then said as though in answer to it: "Your Royal Highness, I am imprisoned in this ship by a man who is the son of a sailor and was himself a sailor until he was expelled from the Service of which your Royal Highness is one of the most brilliant lights, by a shameful and a barbarous act unworthy of an officer and a gentleman. He hopes to marry me, sir, by stealing me from my father, who was a captain in the Royal Navy, and who trusted him. I entreat your Royal Highness's influence to procure my immediate liberation from this wicked man that I may return to my father who will be breaking his heart over my disappearance and loss." She pronounced the words "who will be breaking his heart" in a plaintive Irish accent. But it did not occur to the listener that the apparition she apostrophised was not H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence but Mrs Kitty O'Hara, her mother, who was as famous in her day as Peg Woffington and equal to Mrs Jordan in some scenes of romping and roguishness. Like most sailors of his time Mr Lawrence possessed the instinct of superstition, a quality or element which has contributed the most brilliant of the rays to the glory of the romance of the sea. He was sensible of an emotion of awe as he watched Lucy bowing to and addressing a royal apparition so well known to him as the Sailor Prince whose viewless eye might be upon him, whose invisible ear might be taking in his story whilst the wild-haired girl bowed apparently to the bulkhead or addressed the thin air. She appeared to be listening: then with a profound curtsy, said: "I thank your Royal Highness for your gracious condescension. It is not my wish that this unhappy man should be severely punished. If, sir, it should be your pleasure to order him to be executed, I would travel twenty miles upon my knees to beg him off. I am reduced to this one gown, and am now the Princess Tatters. My cruel gaoler will not suffer me to use a knife to cut the food he sends me. Look at that tray, sir! I feed upon the floor because I have been made a beggar of, and as though I were a savage, I am obliged to use my fingers to eat with."