turmoil and confusion; the stables were full of horses, the parlours were crowded with guests, even the bar was thronged with comers and goers, most of whom had a compliment to spare for mistress Alice. It was some minutes before she could find an opportunity of speaking to him, but the whisper must have been ludicrous as well as affectionate, for her sweetheart burst out laughing, and exploded again at intervals, while he sat with Smoke-Jack over a cup of ale in the tap.
The two shipmates adjourned presently to the stable, where they were followed by Alice, with a lanthorn, an armful of waxed twine, and a large needle, furnished by the elder seaman, such as is used for thrumming sails.
Their occupation seemed to afford amusement, for they laughed so much as greatly to endanger the secrecy enjoined by their feminine assistant, who was so pleased with its progress that she returned to visit them more than once from her avocations in the bar.
The press of company to-night at the "Hamilton Arms" consisted of a very different class from the usual run of its customers; the horses in the stable were well-bred, valuable animals, little inferior in quality to Captain Bold's bay mare herself; the guests, though plainly dressed, were of a bearing that seemed at once to extinguish the captain's claims to consideration, and caused him to slink about in a very unassuming manner till he had fortified his failing audacity with strong drink. They threw silver to old Robin the ostler, and called for measures of claret or burnt sack with an unostentatious liberality that denoted habits of affluence, while their thoughtful faces and intellectual features seemed strangely at variance with the interest they displayed in the projected cock-fight, which was their ostensible cause of gathering. A match for fifty broad pieces a side need scarcely have elicited such eager looks, such anxious whispers, such restless, quivering gestures, above all, such morbid anxiety for the latest news from the capital. They wore their swords, in which there was nothing remarkable, but every man was also provided with a brace of pistols, carried on his person, as though loth to trust the insecurity of saddle-holsters.
