"When I heard about your precious master paying off the regular crew of the yacht I put the circumstance by in my mind, to be brought out again and sifted a little as soon as the opportunity offered.

It offered in about half an hour.

Says I to the gauger, who was the principal talker in the room: 'How about those men that Mr.Smith paid off?
Did they all go as soon as they got their money, or did they stop here till they had spent every farthing of it in the public-houses ?' The gauger laughs.

'No such luck,' says he, in the broadest possible Scotch (which I translate into English, William, for your benefit); 'no such luck; they all went south, to spend their money among finer people than us--all, that is to say, with one exception.

It was thought the steward of the yacht had gone along with the rest, when, the very day Mr.Smith sailed for the Mediterranean, who should turn up unexpectedly but the steward himself! Where he had been hiding, and why he had been hiding, nobody could tell.' 'Perhaps he had been imitating his master, and looking out for a wife,' says I.'Likely enough,' says the gauger; 'he gave a very confused account of himself, and he cut all questions short by going away south in a violent hurry.' That was enough for me: I let the subject drop.