which hung from the raftered ceiling, looked cheerful and cosy in the
extreme.  Through the dense clouds of tobacco smoke that hung about in
every corner, the faces of Mr. Jellyband's customers appeared red and
pleasant to look at, and on good terms with themselves, their host and
all the world; from every side of the room loud guffaws accompanied
pleasant, if not highly intellectual, conversation--while Sally's
repeated giggles testified to the good use Mr. Harry Waite was making
of the short time she seemed inclined to spare him.

They were mostly fisher-folk who patronised Mr. Jellyband's
coffee-room, but fishermen are known to be very thirsty people; the
salt which they breathe in, when they are on the sea, accounts for
their parched throats when on shore.  but "The Fisherman's Rest" was
something more than a rendezvous for these humble folk.  The London
and Dover coach started from the hostel daily, and passengers who had
come across the Channel, and those who started for the "grand tour,"
all became acquainted with Mr. Jellyband, his French wines and his
home-brewed ales.

It was towards the close of September, 1792, and the weather
which had been brilliant and hot throughout the month had suddenly
broken up; for two days torrents of rain had deluged the south of
England, doing its level best to ruin what chances the apples and
pears and late plums had of becoming really fine, self-respecting
fruit.  Even now it was beating against the leaded windows, and
tumbling down the chimney, making the cheerful wood fire sizzle in the
hearth.

"Lud! did you ever see such a wet September, Mr. Jellyband?"
asked Mr. Hempseed.

He sat in one of the seats inside the hearth, did Mr.
Hempseed, for he was an authority and important personage not only at
"The Fisherman's Rest," where Mr. Jellyband always made a special
selection of him as a foil for political arguments, but throughout the
neighborhood, where his learning and notably his knowledge of the
Scriptures was held in the most profound awe and respect.  With one
hand buried in the capacious pockets of his corduroys underneath his
elaborately-worked, well-worn smock, the other holding his long clay
pipe, Mr. Hempseed sat there looking dejectedly across the room at the
rivulets of moisture which trickled down the window panes.

"No," replied Mr. Jellyband, sententiously, "I dunno, Mr.
'Empseed, as I ever did.  An' I've been in these parts nigh on sixty
years."

"Aye! you wouldn't rec'llect the first three years of them sixty,
Mr. Jellyband," quietly interposed Mr. Hempseed.  "I dunno as I ever
see'd an infant take much note of the weather, leastways not in these
parts, an' _I_'ve lived `ere nigh on seventy-five years, Mr. Jellyband."

The superiority of this wisdom was so incontestable that for the moment
Mr. Jellyband was not ready with his usual flow of argument.

"It do seem more like April than September, don't it?"
continued Mr. Hempseed, dolefully, as a shower of raindrops fell with
a sizzle upon the fire.

"Aye! that it do," assented the worth host, "but then what can you `xpect,
Mr. `Empseed, I says, with sich a government as we've got?"

Mr. Hempseed shook his head with an infinity of wisdom,
tempered by deeply-rooted mistrust of the British climate
and the British Government.

"I don't `xpect nothing, Mr. Jellyband," he said.  "Pore folks
like us is of no account up there in Lunnon, I knows that, and it's
not often as I do complain.  But when it comes to sich wet weather in
September, and all me fruit a-rottin' and a-dying' like the `Guptian
mother's first born, and doin' no more good than they did, pore dears,
save a lot more Jews, pedlars and sich, with their oranges and sich
like foreign ungodly fruit, which nobody'd buy if English apples and
pears was nicely swelled.  As the Scriptures say--"

"That's quite right, Mr. `Empseed," retorted Jellyband, "and
as I says, what can you `xpect?  There's all them Frenchy devils over
the Channel yonder a-murderin' their king and nobility, and Mr. Pitt
and Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke a-fightin' and a-wranglin' between them, if
we Englishmen should `low them to go on in their ungodly way.  `Let
'em murder!' says Mr. Pitt.  `Stop `em!' says Mr. Burke."

"And let `em murder, says I, and be demmed to `em." said Mr.
Hempseed, emphatically, for he had but little liking for his friend
Jellyband's political arguments, wherein he always got out of his
depth, and had but little chance for displaying those pearls of wisdom
which had earned for him so high a reputation in the neighbourhood and
so many free tankards of ale at "The Fisherman's Rest."

"Let `em murder," he repeated again, "but don't lets `ave sich rain in
September, for that is agin the law and the Scriptures which says--"

"Lud! Mr. `Arry, `ow you made me jump!"

It was unfortunate for Sally and her flirtation that this
remark of hers should have occurred at the precise moment when Mr.
Hempseed was collecting his breath, in order to deliver himself one of
those Scriptural utterances which made him famous, for it brought down
upon her pretty head the full flood of her father's wrath.

"Now then, Sally, me girl, now then!" he said, trying to force