a hard-bottomed chair. Then he pulled | The castle needs a watchman for fear of off his hat, and wiped his white head with a shred of old flag, and began hunting for his pipe. "First time I ever was in York city; and don't think much of it, if this here is a sample." "Joseph, you must not be supercilious," his host replied, with an amiable smile; "you will see things better through a glass of grog; and the state of the weather points to something dark. You have had a long journey, and the scenery is new. Rum shall it be, my friend? Your countenance says 'yes.' Rum, like a ruby of the finest water, have I; and no water shall you have with it. Said I well? A man without legs must keep himself well above water." "First time I ever was in York city," the ancient watchman answered, "and grog must be done as they does it here. A berth on them old walls would suit me well; and no need to travel such a distance for my beer." 'And you would be the man of all the world for such a berth," said Master Mordacks, gravely, as he poured the sparkling liquor into a glass that was really a tumbler; "for such a post we want a man who is himself a post; a man who will not quit his duty, just because he can not, which is the only way of making sure. Joseph, your idea is a very good one, and your beer could be brought to you at the middle of each watch. I have interest; you shall be appointed." "Sir, I am obligated to you," said the watchman; "but never could I live a month without a wink of sea-stuff. The coming of the clouds, and the dipping of the land, and the waiting of the distance for what may come to be in it; let alone how they goes changing of their color, and making of a noise that is always out of sight: it is the very same as my beer is to me. Master, I never could get on without it." tumbling down; and that is not the soldiers' business, because they are inside. There you could have quantities of seastuff, my good friend; and the tap at the Hooked Cod is nothing to it there. Cheer up, Joseph, we will land you yet. How the devil did you manage, now, to come so far?" "Well, now, your honor, I had rare luck for it, as I must say, ever since I set eyes on you. There comes a son of mine as I thought were lost at sea; but not he, blow me! nearly all of him come back, with a handful of guineas, and the memory of his father. Lord I could have cried; and he up and blubbered fairly, a trick as he learned from ten Frenchmen he had killed. Ah! he have done his work well, and airned a good conduckfourpence - halfpenny a day, so long as ever he shall live hereafter.' "In this world you mean, I suppose, my friend; but be not overcome; such things will happen. But what did you do with all that money, Joseph ?" 66 We never wasted none of it, not half a groat, Sir. We finished out the cellar at the Hooked Cod first; and when Mother Precious made a grumble of it, we gave her the money for to fill it up again, upon the understanding to come back when it was ready; and then we went to Burlington, and spent the rest in poshays like two gentlemen; and when we was down upon our stumps at last, for only one leg there is between us both, your honor, my boy he ups and makes a rummage in his traps; which the Lord he put it into his mind to do so, when he were gone a few good sheets in the wind; and there sure enough he finds five good guineas in the tail of an old hankercher he had clean forgotten; and he says, 'Now, father, you take care of them. Let us go and see the capital, and that good gentleman, as you have picked up a bit of news for.' So we shaped a course for York, on board the schooner Mary Anne, and from Goole in a barge as far as this here bridge; and here we are, high and dry, your honor. I was half a mind to bring in my boy Bob; but he saith, 'Not without the old chap axes;' and being such a noisy one, I took him at his word; though he hath found out what there was to find-not me." "Well, I can understand a thing like that," Mordacks answered, graciously; "my water-butt leaked for three weeks, pat, pat, all night long upon a piece of slate, and when a man came and caulked it up, I put all the blame upon the pillow; but the pillow was as good as ever. Not a wink could I sleep till it began to leak again; and you may trust a York work- "How noble a thing is parental love!" man that it wasn't very long. But, Jo- cried the general factor, in his hard, short seph, I have interest at Scarborough also. | way, which made many people trust him, because it was unpleasant; "and filial duty of unfathomable grog! Worthy Joseph, let your narrative proceed.” "They big words is beyond me, Sir. What use is any man to talk over a chap's head?" "Then, dash your eyes, go on, Joe. Can you understand that, now?" "Yes, Sir, I can, and I likes a thing put sensible. If the gentlemen would always speak like that, there need be no difference atween us. Well, it was all along of all that money-bag of Bob's that he and I found out anything. What good were your guinea? Who could stand treat on that more than a night or two, and the right man never near you? But when you keep a good shop open for a month, as Bob and me did with Widow Tapsy, it standeth to reason that you must have everybody, to be called at all respectable, for miles and miles around. For the first few nights or so some on 'em holds off-for an old chalk against them, or for doubt of what is forrard, or for cowardliness of their wives, or things they may have sworn to stop, or other bad manners. But only go on a little longer, and let them see that you don't care, and send everybody home a-singing through the lanes as merry as a votingtime for Parliament, and the outer ones begins to shake their heads, and to say that they are bound to go, and stop the racket of it. And so you get them all, your honor, saints as well as sinners, if you only keeps the tap turned long enough." "Your reasoning is ingenious, Joseph, and shows a deep knowledge of human nature. But who was this tardy saint that came at last for grog?" "Your honor, he were as big a sinner as ever you clap eyes on. Me and my son was among the sawdust, spite of our three crutches, and he spreading hands at us, sober as a judge, for lumps of ungenerous iniquity. Mother Tapsy told us of it, the very next day, for it was not in our power to be ackirate when he done it, and we see everybody laffing at us round the corner. But we took the wind out of his sails the next night, captain, you may warrant us. Here's to your good health, Sir, afore I beats to win'ard.' "Why, Joseph, you seem to be making up lost way for years of taciturnity in the tower. They say there is a balance in all things." He "We had the balance of him next night, and no mistake, your honor. was one of them 'longshore beggars as turns up here, there, and everywhere, galley-raking, like a stinking ray-fish when the tide goes out; thundering scoundrels that make a living of it, pushing out for roguery with their legs tucked up; no courage for smuggling, nor honest enough, they goes on anyhow with their children paid for. We found out what he were, and made us more ashamed, for such a sneaking rat to preach upon us, like a regular hordinated chaplain, as might say a word or two and mean no harm, with the license of the Lord to do it. So my son Bob and me called a courtmartial in the old tower, so soon as we come round; and we had a red herring, because we was thirsty, and we chawed a bit of pigtail to keep it down. At first we was glum; but we got our peckers up, as a family is bound to do when they comes together. My son Bob was a sharp lad in his time, and could read in Holy Scripter afore he chewed a quid; and I see'd a good deal of it in his mind now, remembering of King Solomon. 'Dad,' he says, 'fetch out that bottle as was left of French white brandy, and rouse up a bit of fire in the old port-hole. We ain't got many toes to warm between us'-only five, you see, your worship'but,' says he, 'we'l warm up the currents where they used to be.' "According to what my son said, I done; for he leadeth me now, being younger of the two, and still using half of a shoemaker. However, I says to him, 'Warm yourself; it don't lay in my power to do that for you.' He never said nothing; for he taketh after me, in tongue and other likings; but he up with the kettle on the fire, and put in about a fathom and a half of pigtail. 'So?' says I; and he says, 'So!' and we both of us began to laugh, as long and as gentle as a pair of cockles, with their tongues inside their shells. "Well, your honor understands; I never spake so much before since ever I pass my coorting-time. We boiled down the pigtail to a pint of tidy soup, and strained it as bright as sturgeon juice; then we got a bottle with 'Navy Supply' on a bull's-eye in the belly of it; and we filled it with the French white brandy, and the pigtail soup, and a noggin of molasses, and shook it all up well togeth she er; and a better contract-rum, your hon- | pocket. And being a lone woman, or, never come into high admiral's stores." doth feel it. Bob and me gave her sail"But, Joseph, good Joseph," cried Mr. | ing orders-'twould amaze you, captain; Mordacks, "do forge ahead a little faster. all was carried out as ship-shape as the Your private feelings, and the manufac- battle of the Nile. There was Rickon ture of them, are highly interesting to Goold at anchor, with a spring upon his you; but I only want to know what came cable, having been converted; and he up of it." and hailed that he would slip, at the very first bad word we used. My son hath such knowledge of good words that he answered, 'Amen, so be it.' "Your honor is like a child hearing of a story; you wants the end first, and the middle of it after; but I bowls along with a hitch and a squirt, from habit of fo'castle: and the more you crosses hawse, the wider I shall head about, or down helm and bear off, mayhap. I can hear my Bob a-singing: what a voice he hath! They tell me it cometh from the timber of his leg; the same as a old Cremony. He tuned up a many times in yonder old barge, and shook the brown water, like a frigate's wake. He would just make our fortin in the Minister, they said, with Black-eyed Susan and Tom Bowline." 66 Truly, he has a magnificent voice: what power, what compass, what a rich clear tone! In spite of the fog I will have the window up." Geoffrey Mordacks loved good singing, the grandest of all melody, and, impatient as he was, he forgot all hurry; while the river, and the buildings, and the arches of the bridge, were ringing, and echoing, and sweetly embosoming the mellow delivery of the one-legged tar. And old Joe was highly pleased, although he would not show it, at such an effect upon a man so hard and dry. "Well, your honor, we goes on decorous, as our old quartermaster used to give the word; and we tried him first with the usual tipple, and several other hands dropped in. But my son and me never took a blessed drop, except from a gin-bottle full of cold water, till we see all the others with their scuppers well awash. Then Bob he findeth fault-Lor' how beautiful he done it!—with the scantling of the stuff; and he shouteth out, 'Mother, I'm blest if I won't stand that old guinea bottle of best Jamaica, the one as you put by, with the cobwebs on it, for Lord Admiral. No Lord Admiral won't come now. Just you send away, and hoist it up.' 66 Rickon Goold pricked up his ugly ears at this; and Mother Tapsy did it bootiful. And to cut a long yarn short, we spliced him, captain, with never a thought of what would come of it; only to have our revenge, your honor. He showed himself that greedy of our patent rum, that he never let the bottle out of his own elbow, and the more he stowed away, the more his derrick chains was creaking; but if anybody reasoned, there he stood upon his rights, and defied every way of seeing different, until we was com little room with sea-weeds over it. "Now, your honor, it is overbad of you," he continued, with a softening grin, "to hasten me so, and then to hear me out o' window, because Bob hath a sweeter pipe. Ah, he can whistle like a black-pelled to take and spread him down, in the bird, too, and gain a lot of money; but there, what good? He sacrifices it all to the honor of his heart, first maggot that cometh into it; and he done the very same with Rickon Goold, the Methody galley-raker. We never was so softy when I were afloat. But your honor shall hear, and give judgment for your self. "Mother Precious was ready in her mind to run out a double-shotted gun at Rickon, who liveth down upon the rabbitwarren, to the other side of Bempton, because he scarcely ever doth come nigh her; and when he do come, he putteth up both hands, to bless her for hospitality, but neither of them into his breeches "With all this, Bob and me was as sober as two judges, though your honor would hardly believe it, perhaps ; but we left him in the dark, to come round upon the weeds, as a galley-raker ought to do. And now we began to have a little drop ourselves, after towing the prize into port, and recovering the honor of the British navy; and we stood all round to every quarter of the compass, with the bottom of the locker still not come to shallow soundings. But sudden our harmony was spoiled by a scream, like a whistle from the very bottom of the sea. "We all of us jumped up, as if a gun had broke its lashings; and the last day of judgment was the thoughts of many bod- | would believe, but although my nob is so much older of the pair, and white where his is as black as any coal, Bob's it was as first throwed the painter up, for a-hitch ies; but Bob he down at once with his button-stump gun-metal, and takes the command of the whole of us. 'Bear a hand, all on you,' he saith, quite stead-ing of this drifty to the starn of your confast; Rickon Goold is preaching to his own text to-night.' And so a' was, sure enough; so a' was, your honor. "We thought he must have died, although he managed to claw off of it, with confessing of his wickedness, and striking to his Maker. All of us was frightened so, there was no laugh among us, till we come to talk over it afterward. There the thundering rascal lay in the middle of that there mangerie of sea-stuff, as Mother Precious is so proud of, that the village calleth it the 'Widow's Weeds.' Blest if he didn't think that he were a-lying at the bottom of the sea, among the stars and cuttles, waiting for the day of judgment! "Oh, Captain McNabbins, and Mate Govery,' he cries, 'the hand of the Lord hath sent me down to keep you company down here. I never would 'a done it, captain, hard as you was on me, if only I had knowed how dark and cold and shivery it would be down here. I cut the plank out; I'll not lie; no lies is any good down here, with the fingers of the deep things pointing to me, and the black devil's wings coming over me-but a score of years agone it were, and never no one dreamed of it-oh, pull away, pull! for God's sake, pull!-the wet woman and the three innocent babbies crawling over me like congers!' 66 This was the shadows of our legs, your honor, from good Mother Tapsy's candle; for she was in a dreadful way by this time about her reputation and her weeds, and come down with her tongue upon the lot of us. 'Enter all them names upon the log,' says I to Bob, for he writeth like a scholar. But Bob says, 'Hold hard, dad; now or never.' And with that, down he goeth on the deck himself, and wriggleth up to Rickon through the weeds, with a hiss like a great seasnake, and grippeth him. 'Name of ship, you sinner!' cried Bob, in his deep voice, like Old Nick a-hailing from a sepulchre. 'Golconda, of Calcutta,' says the fellow, with a groan as seemed to come out of the whites of his eyes; and down goes his head again, enough to split a cat-head. And that was the last of him we heard that night. "Well, now, captain, you scarcely sarns. And it never come across him till the locker was run out, and the two of us pulling longer faces than our legs is. Then Bob, by the mercy of the Lord, like Peter, found them guineas in the corner of his swab-some puts it round their necks, and some into their pockets; I never heard of such a thing till chaps run soft and watery-and so we come to this here place to change the air and the breeding, and spin this yarn to your honor's honor, as hath a liberal twist in it; and then to take orders, and draw rations, and any 'rears of pay fallen due, after all dibs gone in your service; and for Bob to tip a stave in the Minister." "You have done wisely and well in coming here," said Mr. Mordacks, cheerfully; but we must have further particulars, my friend. You seem to have hit upon the clew I wanted, but it must be followed very cautiously. You know where to lay your hand upon this villain? You have had the sense not to scare him off?" 66 MEN OF SOLID TIMBER. MR. MORDACKS was one of those vivacious men who have strong faith in their good luck, and yet attribute to their merits whatever turns out well. In the present matter he had done as yet nothing at all ingenious, or even to be called sagacious. The discovery of Monument Joe," or "Peg-leg Joe," as he was called at Flamborough, was not the result of any skill whatever, either his own or the factor's, but a piece of as pure luck as could be. For all that, however, Mr. Mordacks intended to have the whole credit as his sole and righteous due. "Whenever I am at all down-hearted, samples of my skill turn up," he said to himself as soon as Joe was gone; "and happy results come home, on purpose to rebuke my diffidence. Would any other man have got so far as I have got by simple, straightforward, yet truly skillful action, without a suspicion being started? Old Jellicorse lies on his bed of roses, snoring folios of long words, without a dream of the gathering cloud. Those insolent ladies are revelling in the land from which they have ousted their only brother; they are granting leases not worth a straw; they are riding the high horse; they are bringing up that cub (who set the big dog at me) in every wanton luxury. But wait a bit-wait a bit, my ladies; as sure as I live I shall have you. "In the first place, it is clear that my conclusion was correct concerning that poor Golconda; and why not also in the other issue? The Indiaman was scuttled -I had never thought of that, but only of a wreck. It comes to the same thing, only she went down more quietly; and that explains a lot of things. She was bound for Leith, with the boy to be delivered into the hands of his Scotch relatives. She was spoken last off Yarmouth Roads, all well, and under easy sail. Very good so far. I have solved her fate, which for twenty years has been a mystery. We shall have all particulars in proper time, by steering on one side of the law, which always huddles up everything. A keen eye must be kept upon that scoundrel, but he must never dream that he is watched at all; he has committed a capital offense. But as yet there is nothing but his own raving to convict him of barratry. The truth must be got at by gentle means. I must not claim the £500 as yet, but I am sure of getting it. And I have excellent hopes of the £5000." Geoffrey Mordacks never took three nights to sleep upon his thoughts (as the lawyer of Middleton loved to do), but rather was apt to overdrive his purport, with the goad of hasty action. But now he was quite resolved to be most careful; for the high hand would never do in such a ticklish matter, and the fewer the hands introduced at all into it, the better the chance of coming out clear and clean. The general factor had never done anything which, in his opinion, was not thoroughly upright; and now, with his reputation made, and his conscience stiffened to the shape of it, even a large sum of money must be clean, and cleanly got at, to make it pay for handling. This made him counsel with himself just now. For he was a superior man upon the whole, and particular always in feeling sure that the right word in anything would be upon his side. Not that he cared a groat for anybody's gossip; only that he kept a lofty tenor of good opinion. And sailors who made other sailors tipsy, and went rolling about on the floor all together, whether with natural legs or artificial, would do no credit to his stairs of office on a fine market-day in the morning. On the other hand, while memory held sway, no instance could be cited of two jolly sailors coming to see the wonders of this venerable town, and failing to be wholly intoxicated with them, before the Minster bell struck one. This was to be avoided, or rather forestalled, as a thing inevitable should be. Even in York city, teeming as it is with most delightful queerities, the approach of two sailors with three wooden legs might be anticipated at a distant offing, so abundant are boys there, and everywhere. Therefore it was well provided, on the part of Master Mordacks, that Kitty, or Koity, the maid-of-all-work, a damsel of muscular power and hard wit, should hold tryst with these mariners in the time of early bucket, and appoint a little meeting with her master by-and-by. This she did cleverly, and they were not put out; because they were to dine at his expense at a snug little chop-house in Parliament Street, and there to remain until he came to pay the score. All this happened to the utmost of desires; and before they had time to get thick-witted, Mordacks stood before them. His sharp eyes took in Sailor Bob before the poor fellow looked twice at him, and the general factor saw that he might be trusted not to think much for himself. This was quite as Mr. Mordacks hoped; he wanted a man who could hold his tongue, and do what he was told to do. After a few words about their dinner, and how they got on, and so forth, the principal came to the point by saying: "Now both of you must start to-morrow morning; such clever fellows can not be spared to go to sleep. You shall come and see York again, with free billet, and lashings of money in your pockets, as soon as you have carried out your sailing orders. To-night you may jollify; but |