“He turned his herring yonder night when he left goodbye to the four of us,” he said. “My father did the same the night he was lost running rum for Whitehaven, and I've never seen a man do it and live.”
“It's forgot at you father,” wept Grannie. “It was Mr. Philip that turned it. Aw boy veen! boy veen!”
“How could that be, mother?” said Cæsar. “Mr. Philip isn't dead.”
But Grannie heard no more. She was busy with the consolations of half-a-dozen women who were gathered around her. “I dreamt it the night he sailed. I heard a cry, most terrible, I did. 'Father,' says I, 'what's that?' It was the same as if I had seen the poor boy coming to his end un-timeously. And I didn't get a wink on the night.”
“Well, he has gone to the rest that remaineth,” said Cæsar. “The grass perisheth, and the worm devoureth, and well all be in heaven with him soon.”
“God forbid, father; don't talk of such dreadful things,” said Grannie, napping her apron. “Do you say his mother, ma'am? Is she in life? No, but under the sod, I don't know the years. Information of the lungs, poor thing.”
“I've known him since I was a slip of a boy,” said one. “It was whip-top time—no, it was peg-top time——”
“I saw him the morning he sailed,” said another. “I was standing so——”
“Mr. Christian saw him last,” moaned Grannie, and the people in the bar-room peered through at Philip with awe.
“I felt like a father for the lad myself,” said Cæsar, “he was always my white-headed boy, and I stuck to him with life. He desarved it, too. Maybe his birth was a bit mischancy, but what's the ould saying, 'Don't tell me what I was, tell me what I am.' And Pete was that civil with the tongue—a civiller young man never was.”