Windsor Magazine/Volume 30/His Lady of an Hour

HIS LADY OF AN HOUR.
By G. B. LANCASTER.
THE God of Work is not merciful to all men alike, though they bring him their muscle and sinew and the eager strength of their manhood. Lew Holderness had brought these things many times without avail during the last seven months fruitless searching for a billet; and when Steel, skipper of the pearling-brig Aurora, lifted him suddenly out of his despair, and pitchforked him into position of second mate aboard the Aurora, Lew went out and pawned the old signet ring which had been pawned five times before, and then turned into the Wharf Hotel to celebrate.
"Five hours before I need be aboard," he said. "Five hours! Heavens! A man can turn a town inside out in less time than that."
He was going to do something which would affect him rather more, but he did not know it. Life has a way of springing her tests on men and then sitting back to see how they take them.
The very ring of his feet lifted the eyes of the men in the bar, and Tommy Ives turned with the usual joke that had worn cruelly threadbare in these last months.
"Goin' to shout us, Lew? Mine's a gin cocktail."
"Yes." Lew pulled himself up on the counter and grinned at them with his

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