STORY OF THE PRESS-GANG For a few days after the evening mentioned in the last chapter the weather was dull.

Not in quick, sudden showers did the rain come down, but in constant drizzle, blotting out all colour from the surrounding landscape, and filling the air with fine gray mist, until people breathed more water than air.

At such times the consciousness of the nearness of the vast unseen sea acted as a dreary depression to the spirits; but besides acting on the nerves of the excitable, such weather affected the sensitive or ailing in material ways.

Daniel Robson's fit of rheumatism incapacitated him from stirring abroad; and to a man of his active habits, and somewhat inactive mind, this was a great hardship.

He was not ill-tempered naturally, but this state of confinement made him more ill-tempered than he had ever been before in his life.