“Too many questions to be answered in an open roadstead, friend Joram; and altogether too dry a subject for a husky conversation.  When I am birthed in one of your inner cabins, with a mug of flip and a kid of good Rhode Island beef within grappling distance, why, as many questions as you choose, and as many answers, you know, as suits my appetite.”

“And who’s to pay the piper, honest Bob? whose ship’s purser will pay your check now?” continued the publican, showing the old sailor in, however, with a readiness that seemed to contradict the doubt, expressed by his words, of any reward for such extraordinary civility.

“Who?” interrupted the other, displaying the money so lately received from Wilder, in such a manner that it might be seen by the few by-standers who remained, as though he would himself furnish a sufficient apology for the distinguished manner in which he was received; “who but this gentleman?  I can boast of being backed by the countenance of his Sacred Majesty himself, God bless him!”

“God bless him!” echoed several of the loyal lieges; and that too in a place which has since heard such very different cries, and where the words would now excite nearly as much surprise, though far less alarm, than an earthquake.

“God bless him!” repeated Joram, opening the door of an inner room, and pointing the way to his customer, “and all that are favored with his countenance!  Walk in, old Bob, and you shall soon grapple with half an ox.”

Wilder, who had approached the outer door of the tavern as the mob receded, witnessed the retreat of the two worthies into the recesses of the house, and immediately entered the bar-room himself.  While deliberating on the manner in which he should arrive at a communication with his new confederate, without attracting too much attention to so odd an association, the landlord returned in person to relieve him.  After casting a hasty glance around the apartment, his look settled on our adventurer, whom he approached in a manner half-doubting, half-decided.

“What success, sir, in looking for a ship?” he demanded now recognizing, for the first time, the stranger with whom he had before held converse that morning.  “More hands than places to employ them?”

“I am not sure it will so prove.  In my walk on the hill, I met an old seaman, who”—­

“Hum!” interrupted the publican, with an intelligible though stolen, sign to follow.  “You will find it more convenient, sir, to take your breakfast in another room.”  Wilder followed his conductor, who left the public apartment by a different door from that by which he had led his other guest into the interior of the house, wondering at the air of mystery that the innkeeper saw fit to assume on the occasion.  After leading him by a circuitous passage.  The latter showed Wilder, in profound silence, up a private stair-way, into the very attic of the building.  Here he rapped lightly at a door, and was bid to enter, by a voice