Why not, indeed? 'Twas that or turn cut-purse and road-lifter for a
youth of birth without means in those days.

Of Jack Battle I saw less. He shipped with the fishing boats in the
summer and cruised with any vagrant craft for the winter. When he came
ashore he was as small and eel-like and shy and awkward as ever, with
the same dumb fidelity in his eyes.

And what a snowy maid had Rebecca become! Sitting behind her
spinning-wheel, with her dainty fingers darting in the sunlight, she
seemed the pink and whitest thing that ever grew, with a look on her
face of apple-blossoms in June; but the sly wench had grown mighty
demure with me. When I laughed over that ending to our last lesson,
she must affect an air of injury. 'Twas neither her fault nor mine, I
declare, coaxing back her good-humour; 'twas the fault of the face. I
wanted to see where the white began and the pink ended. Then Rebecca,
with cheeks a-bloom under the hiding of her bonnet, quickens steps to
the meeting-house; but as a matter of course we walk home together, for
behind march the older folk, staidly discoursing of doctrine.

"Rebecca," I say, "you did not take your eyes off the preacher for one
minute."

"How do you know, Ramsay?" retorts Rebecca, turning her face away with
a dimple trembling in her chin, albeit it was the Sabbath.

"That preacher is too handsome to be sound in his doctrine, Rebecca."

Then she grows so mighty prim she must ask which heading of the sermon