It may have been no more than the fortune of war.

But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it.

It led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a further increase of his own labours and his owner's profit.

Whacker and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end.

But that is to anticipate.
One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding down the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss Bishop just issuing from the shed.