My sympathies were greatly excited; but in a quarrel between man and wife, I had heard older people say no one should interfere unless they came to blows, and I said nothing.
"Griffin sailed in some vessel with Mr. Cornwood, I believe," I added.
"Never in this world!" protested Chloe. "He was born and raised in Fernandina, as I was; and I can tell where he was every hour of his life, up to our marriage. He was on the same steamer with me three years, and both of us were at home up to that time."
"Why did you marry him if you knew him so well?" I asked, much interested in her story.
"Because I was foolish, and thought I could manage him. Perhaps I could, if he didn't drink no liquor."
"I was not aware that he was a drinking man."
"If you had got near enough to smell his breath to-day, you would have known that he drank liquor. He never seems to be very bad, but whiskey makes him ugly."
"He seems to be a good friend of Mr. Cornwood," I suggested.
"Well, he ought to be; for Mr. Cornwood got him out of a very bad scrape when he nearly killed a man in Jacksonville last January. I don't think much of Mr. Cornwood, neither. I reckon he uses Griffin as a witness when he wants one, for Griffin will swear to anything."
"Did Mr. Cornwood ever fall overboard, and Griffin save him?"