"He speaks as if you'd been blabbing all sorts of things." "I really don't think I ever did," said Heathcote, ransacking his memory.

"I may have said once I thought Coote was rather an ass, but that was all." "What made you tell him that ?" said Coote.
"He asked me if I didn't think so," said Georgie, apologetically, "and of course I was bound to say what I thought." "Rather," said Coote.
"But he's telling crams about you, Dick," said Georgie; "I'm quite sure of that.

He used to try and make out you were a sneak and a prig; and perhaps I believed him once or twice, but that was while I was a cad, you know." "Oh, yes, that's all right!" said Dick, putting his arm in that of his friend.
Pledge would have had very little consolation out of this short discussion, and if for the next two days he sat up in his study expecting that every footstep belonged to the "Firm" on its way to capitulate, he must have been sorely disappointed.

Capitulation was the one consideration which had never once entered the heads of the honest fraternity.
That afternoon the town of Templeton was startled by an incident, which had it come to the ears of our heroes, as they sat and groaned over their "Select Dialogues of the Dead," would have effectually driven every letter of the Greek alphabet out of their heads for the time being.
The event was nothing else but the arrival in port of the collier brig, _Hail! Columbia_ with a cargo of coals from the Tyne, and _mirabile dictu_! with the _Martha_ lying comfortably, bottom upwards, safe and sound, on her deck.
The collier, according to the account of the skipper, had been running across the head of the bay on the 5th of June last, in half a cap of wind from the shore, when it sighted the _Martha_ drifting empty out to sea.

Having sent one of his men after her to capture her, and being convinced by the absence of oars or tackle that she must have drifted from her moorings empty, he took her on board; and, as he was bound to deliver his cargo by a certain day, and the wind being against his putting into Templeton, he stowed his prize comfortably away amidships, where she had been ever since, awaiting his next call at Templeton.
With the free-and-easy business ways of his craft, he had neglected to send any letter or message announcing the safety of the _Martha_ to her afflicted friends; and having been detained in this place and that by stress of weather or business, he had now, after more than three months' absence, his first opportunity of restoring the lost property to its rightful owner.
If the simple fishermen of Templeton had been inclined to believe in miracles, the strange reappearance of the missing _Martha_ at this particular time must have savoured of something of the sort.