you wondered that it was not out of breath or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.
"Now, that bird," he would say, "is, may be, two hundred years old, Hawkins—they live forever mostly, and if anybody's seen more wickedness it must be the devil himself. She's sailed with England—the great Cap'n England,1 the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the ' Viceroy of the Indies' out of Goa, she was, and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you smelled powder—didn't you, cap'n?"
"Stand by to go about," the parrot would scream.
"Ah, she's a handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird of mine swearing blue fire and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before the chaplain." And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had, that made me think he was the best of men.
In the meantime squire and Captain Smollett were still on pretty distant terms with one another. The squire made no bones about the matter; he despised
