CHAPTER XX.
Now, what is this that haunts me like my shadow, Frisking and mumming like an elf in moonlight! -- BEN JONSON.
Peveril found the master of the vessel rather less rude than those in his station of life usually are, and received from him full satisfaction concerning the fate of Fenella, upon whom the captain bestowed a hearty curse, for obliging him to lay-to until he had sent his boat ashore, and had her back again.
"I hope," said Peveril, "no violence was necessary to reconcile her to go ashore?
I trust she offered no foolish resistance ?" "Resist! mein Gott," said the captain, "she did resist like a troop of horse--she did cry, you might hear her at Whitehaven--she did go up the rigging like a cat up a chimney; but dat vas ein trick of her old trade." "What trade do you mean ?" said Peveril.
"Oh," said the seaman, "I vas know more about her than you, Meinheer.
I vas know that she vas a little, very little girl, and prentice to one seiltanzer, when my lady yonder had the good luck to buy her." "A seiltanzer!" said Peveril; "what do you mean by that ?" "I mean a rope-danzer, a mountebank, a Hans pickel-harring.

I vas know Adrian Brackel vell--he sell de powders dat empty men's stomach, and fill him's own purse.

Not know Adrian Brackel, mein Gott! I have smoked many a pound of tabak with him." Peveril now remembered that Fenella had been brought into the family when he and the young Earl were in England, and while the Countess was absent on an expedition to the continent.

Where the Countess found her, she never communicated to the young men; but only intimated, that she had received her out of compassion, in order to relieve her from a situation of extreme distress.
He hinted so much to the communicative seaman, who replied, "that for distress he knew nocht's on't; only, that Adrian Brackel beat her when she would not dance on the rope, and starved her when she did, to prevent her growth." The bargain between the countess and the mountebank, he said, he had made himself; because the Countess had hired his brig upon her expedition to the continent.

None else knew where she came from.