"Do you know him?" emphatically asked the galleyman.
"To be sure I do!"
"But I mean," impatiently resumed Wells, "did you ever see him before he was with those Essex men?"
"No."
"Then, Stephen Holgrave, a word in your ear:—I know him; and let that man hoist what colours he may, steer clear of him—you understand me!"
Holgrave had not time to reply, when Wells suddenly, in a gay careless tone, accosted a man who was approaching the spot where they stood. "Hah! Harvey! who thought of seeing you among the true commons?"
Harvey looked at the speaker an instant, and then, recognizing him as poor Beauchamp's successor in the jury, was about to joke him upon his long fast, when his eyes, gleaming upon Holgrave, he thought it the most prudent course to make no allusion to the matter, but directly to reply to Wells's salutation.
"Why my business in the country," said he, "fell off a little; and so I was trying to make out a living here, and Tom Merritt coming across me, it took little to persuade me to hold with the commons."
"In hopes of being well paid," thought the galleyman, though he said nothing; he merely smiled an answer, and then, drawing Harvey a little aside, whispered him—
"But what gale drove our worthy foreman here?"