“’Tis use and experience, Pardon, that makes men of us all.  I should know something of batteries, having seen so many wars, and I served a campaign of a week, in that very fort, when the rumour came that the French were sending cruisers from Louisburg down the coast.  For that matter, my duty was to stand sentinel over that very cannon; and, if I have done the thing once, I have twenty times squinted along the piece, to see in what quarter it would send its shot, provided such a calamity should arrive as that it might become necessary to fire it loaded with real warlike balls.”

“And who are these?” demanded Pardon, with that species of sluggish curiosity which had been awakened by the wonders related by the other:  “Are these mariners of the slaver, or are they idle Newporters?”

“Them!” exclaimed the tailor; “sure enough, they are new-comers, and it may be well to have a closer look at them in these troublesome times!  Here, Nab, take the garment, and press down the seams, you idle hussy; for neighbour Hopkins is straitened for time, while your tongue is going like a young lawyer’s in a justice court.  Don’t be sparing of your elbow, girl; for it’s no India muslin that you’ll have under the iron, but cloth that would do to side a house with.  Ah! your mother’s loom, Pardy, robs the seamster of many an honest job.”

Having thus transferred the remainder of the job from his own hands to those of an awkward, pouting girl, who was compelled to abandon her gossip with a neighbour, she went to obey his injunctions, he quickly removed his own person, notwithstanding a miserable limp with which he had come into the world, from the shop-board to the open air.  As more important characters are, however, about to be introduced to the reader, we shall defer the ceremony to the opening of another chapter.

Chapter II.

  Sir Toby.  “Excellent!  I smell a device.”

  Twelfth Night.

The strangers were three in number; for strangers the good-man Homespun, who knew not only the names but most of the private history of every man and woman within ten miles of his own residence immediately proclaimed them to be, in a whisper to his companion; and strangers, too, of a mysterious and threatening aspect.  In order that others may have an opportunity of judging of the probability of the latter conjecture, it becomes necessary that a more minute account should be given of the respective appearances of these individuals, who, unhappily for their reputations, had the misfortune to be unknown to the gossipping tailor of Newport.