There was a deeply injured note in Oily Dave’s tone now.  He evidently resented keenly the fact that his bad tidings had not received a more sympathetic hearing.

“Who was on the Mary?” asked Miles.

“The usual lot:  Nick Jones, master, Stee Jenkin, Bobby Poole, and Mr. Ferrars.  A perfect Jonah that man is, and disaster follows wherever he goes,” said Oily Dave, with a melancholy shake of his head.

“What do you mean?” demanded Miles, with a stare of surprise.

“What I say,” retorted Oily Dave.  “Mr. Selincourt sent him to me as a lodger; the river came down in flood and tried to drown him, and spoiled my house something fearful.  Then he gets caught in a tidehole, when out walking with his sweetheart, which Miss Selincourt is, I suppose, though it passes me why a young lady with dollars same as she has got don’t look higher than a fisherman.  But the thing that strikes me is that the man must have done something pretty bad, somewhere back behind, for the waters to be following him round like this.”

“Look here! don’t you think it is a pretty low-down thing to be taking a man’s character away, directly there’s a rumour going round that he is dead?” asked Miles stormily.

“I ain’t taking away his character.  I’m only saying that if he was fated to drown it is a great pity that he wasn’t left to drown in the first place, seeing that it would have saved a lot of bother, and other precious lives also,” replied Oily Dave, with the look and pose of a man who is bitterly misunderstood.

“Why, you must be stark, staring mad to talk like this!” exclaimed Miles, in doubt whether to heave the nearest article on which he could lay hands at the head of Oily Dave, or to pity him as a lunatic.

“I’m no more mad than you are, young ’un; but there’s a deal of what scholars call practical economy in me, and I can’t bear waste of no sort or kind, I can’t.  Why, when customers come to my hotel and leaves any liquor in their mugs, which is but seldom, I always goes and drains ’em down my own neck, to stop waste.  And so I says that if Mr. Ferrars hadn’t been saved that first time, we should have been spared trouble since.”

“What trouble have you ever taken in the matter?” demanded Miles.

“Didn’t I risk my life, and wet myself to the skin, pulling him and Miss Selincourt out of the tidehole?” asked Oily Dave.  “If you misdoubt my word, ask your sister, who was there and helped as well as a gal could, which isn’t much anyhow.  Well, there was three lives in danger that time, him, and me, and Miss Selincourt, and I dare say your sister got dampish at the feet.  Now, this third and last time, matters is a deal more serious still.  Nick Jones leaves a widow, though she don’t much count.  Stee Jenkin leaves a widow, nice little woman too.  Then there’s the children, poor things, orphans afore they are big enough to earn a penny for themselves.  Bobby Poole hadn’t a wife certainly, but he would have had by and by, most likely.  It is a bad business altogether.  And now I want some tobacco.”