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"Paul, your honour," answered the fellow, brightening instinctively with the face Mr Lawrence now viewed him with. Captain Acton easily perceived what was happening, and might as easily have guessed what was to come. The Admiral was as perceptive as his friend, and as reserved. "Why, perhaps not," answered the Admiral. "He would be a fool as well as a villain for so doing. Take an opportunity of putting [Pg 115]the matter to him as you put it to me. I do not want to see your chance obstructed nor Captain Acton's kindness embarrassed by any action on the part of old Greyquill. And I beg, sir," continued the old officer speaking slowly and solemnly, "that during the rest of your time ashore you will behave with that discretion which can alone secure you the continuance of Captain Acton's goodwill. You are going to dine at 'The Swan'? I am sure you will understand what must signify a report that you were not master of yourself, for," continued the old Admiral with emphasis, "it is idle to believe that the best natured man in the world will confide his property and the care of valuable lives to the custody of a man who is not fit to take charge of himself.".

Croaker, mincing in and out among the rag-weeds, led straight across the yard to a tiny ramshackle building which at one time might have been a root-house. Billy, feeling that at any moment an icy hand might reach out and grip his windpipe, followed. It was a terrible risk he was running but the prize was worth it. His feet seemed weighted with lead. At last he reached the root-house and leaned against it, dizzy and panting. Then he looked about for Croaker. The crow had vanished!I tried logging in using my phone number and I was supposed to get a verification code text,but didn't get it. I clicked resend a couple time, tried the "call me instead" option twice but didn't get a call either. the trouble shooting had no info on if the call me instead fails.There was Mr Lawrence was for a few days very uneasy, but uneasy is a mild term to express the state of a man's mind that starts at a look or an exclamation, who fancies he is whispered about when two go past him talking, who expects that every man who approaches him is going to speak to him about the letter he has found, who imagines that every look that his father fastens upon him is a prelude to a tremendous attack, who is willing to attribute the silence of Captain Acton to the consideration of what steps in the face of such an enormity should be taken by him against the son of his old friend Sir William Lawrence.

Lucy had often viewed this scene: her pause now was dictated by a trifling feeling of curiosity. Against the wharves on the left-hand side and over against the stump-ended projection of pier was moored her father's ship the Minorca, of which she had just now been assured Sir William Lawrence's son was to be offered the command. This vessel lay with two or three others, a brig or two and a schooner, at the wharves, and with her own and the drying sails of the others, the tall spars, the yards across, the complicated lines of the rigging, provided a bold and even ample figure of shipping to the eye. But in addition to these there lay in the harbour a number of fishing craft, and this side the extremity of the wharves within musket shot of where Lucy stood was moored the Saucy brig-of-war of about one hundred and eighty tons armed with thirty-two pounder carronades. She was one of a number of the like sort of brig which were to be found in that year (1805) on the coasts of Sussex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. These brigs were usually hauled into creeks or laid up in snug corners where the Lieutenant, as Sir William had pointed out, had his cabbage garden and pig-sty. They were designed as a provision against[Pg 27] the invasion of the French, and were quite worthless, as they were never ready, and always so anchored or so secured as to demand as much time in getting under weigh as would take a French army of invasion to march from Dover to Ashford. "Well done, Tupman!" cried Captain Acton, who watched the manœuvre with a sailor's interest. "Sluggard as you are, you [Pg 80]have your little ship and her people well in hand. I wonder if there's a foreigner afloat that could have made sail with the despatch that brig exhibited?" It was broad daylight when Anson, in response to an angry call from the bottom of the stairway, sat up in bed. Vaguely he realized that in some dire way this glad morning proclaimed a day of doom, but his drowsy senses were still leaping vast chasms of dreamland—striving to slip from the control of saner reasoning and drift away with a happy abandon of dire results to follow. What boy has not had the same experience, even although he knew that a razor-strop, wielded by a vigorous hand, would in all probability accomplish quickly what his drowsy will had failed to accomplish? Anson was just dropping off into the lulling arms of Morpheus when that extra sense, possessed by all boys in a measure and by certain boys in particular, warned him back to wakefulness and a realization of his danger. One sat at the table who peered at him hard when Mr Short began. This was a middle-aged man in a brown wig. He was one of the two clerks kept by Mr Greyquill, and regularly dined at "The Swan's" ordinary, a repast which had never once been decorated by the presence of Mr Greyquill, who, living in rooms over his offices, chose to eat for his breakfast a little fish which he bought from[Pg 129] a man with a barrow with whom he haggled, and for his dinner a cutlet or a piece of steak, just enough for one, with vegetables, and for supper whatever might have been left from breakfast or dinner, and if nothing was left, then a piece of "hearty bread and cheese," as he would term it, and a glass of beer..