We had a long sitting with Captain Welsh, whom I found immoveable, as I expected I should.  His men, he said, had confessed their sin similarly to the crab in a hole, with one claw out, as the way of sinners was.  He blamed himself mainly.  ’Where you have accidents, Mr. Richmond, you have faults; and where you have faults aboard a ship you may trace a line to the captain.  I should have treated my ship’s crew like my conscience, and gone through them nightly.  As it is, sir, here comes round one of your accidents to tell me I have lived blinded by conceit.  That is my affliction, my young friend.  The payment of the money is no more so than to restore money held in trust.’

Temple and I argued the case with him, as of old on our voyage, on board the barque Priscilla, quite unavailingly.

‘Is a verdict built on lies one that my Maker approves of?’ said he.  ’If I keep possession of that money, my young friends, will it clothe me?  Ay, with stings!  Will it feed me?  Ay, with poison.  And they that should be having it shiver and want!’

He was emphatic, as he would not have been, save to read us an example, owing to our contention with him.  ‘The money is Satan in my very hands!’ When he had dismissed the subject he never returned to it.

His topic of extreme happiness, to which Temple led him, was the rescue of a beautiful sinner from a life of shame.  It appeared that Captain Welsh had the habit between his voyages of making one holiday expedition to the spot of all creation he thought the fairest, Richmond Hill, overlooking the Thames; and there, one evening, he espied a lady in grief, and spoke to her, and gave her consolation.  More, he gave her a blameless home.  The lady’s name was Mabel Bolton.  She was in distress of spirit rather than of circumstances, for temptation was thick about one so beautiful, to supply the vanities and luxuries of the father of sin.  He described her.

She was my first playfellow, the miller’s daughter of Dipwell, Mabel Sweetwinter, taken from her home by Lord Edbury during my German university career, and now put away by him upon command of his family on the eve of his marriage.

She herself related her history to me, after telling me that she had seen me once at the steps of Edbury’s Club.  Our meeting was no great surprise to either of us.  She had heard my name as that of an expected visitor; she had seen Temple, moreover, and he had prompted me with her Christian name and the praise of her really glorious hair, to anticipate the person who was ushered into the little cabin-like parlour by Captain Welsh’s good old mother.