"Don't you be afraid, Joyce. In the first place I shan't go back there till twelve o'clock on the fifth. I'll come up from Plymouth by the night coach, and put up at the 'Golden Cross' like a gentleman. And, in the second place, I flatter myself I'm a match for any set of land-sharks in creation."
"No, you're not, captain. No honest man is ever a match for a scoundrel."
Jernam and his companion carried the captain's portmanteau between them. They hailed a hackney-coach presently, and drove to the "Golden Cross," through the chill, gray streets, where the closed shutters had a funereal aspect.
At the coach-office they parted, with many friendly words on both sides; but to the last, Joyce Harker was grave and anxious.
The last he saw of his friend and employer was the captain's dark face looking out of the coach-window; the captain's hand waved in cordial farewell.
"What a good fellow he is!—what a noble fellow!" thought the wizen little clerk, as he trudged back towards the City. "But was there ever a baby so helpless on shore?—was there ever an innocent infant that needed so much looking after?"
* * * * *
Valentine Jernam arrived at Plymouth early the next morning, and walked from Plymouth to the little village of Allanbay, in which lived the only relative he had in the world, except his brother George. Walking at a leisurely pace along the quiet road, Captain Jernam, although not usually a thoughtful person, was fain to think about something, and fell to thinking over the past.
Light-hearted and cheery of spirit as the adventurous sailor was now-a-days, his childhood had been a very sad one. Motherless at eight years of age, and ill-used by a drunken father, the boy had suffered as the children of the poor too often suffer.
His mother had died, leaving George an infant of less than twelve months old; and from the hour of her death, Valentine had been the infant's sole nurse and protector; standing between the helpless little one and the father's brutality; enduring all hardships cheerfully, so long as he was able to shelter little Georgy.