oo often avowed
the pleasure he would feel in quartering himself on my kind friend,
dissipating his hard-earned gains, and squandering the fruits of all his
toil. Deterred by such a prospect, I resolved rather never to revisit
him than in such company. Now, however, I was again alone, and all my
hopes and wishes turned towards him. A few hours' sail might again bring
me beneath his roof, and once more should I find myself at home. The
thought was calming to all my excitement; I forgot every danger I had
passed through, I lost all memory of every vicissitude I had escaped,
and had only the little low parlour in the 'Black Pits' before my mind's
eye, the wild, unweeded garden, and the sandy, sunny beach before the
door. It was as though all that nigh a year had compassed had never
occurred, and that my life at Crown Point and my return to England were
only a dream. Sleep overcame me as I thus lay pondering, and when I
awoke the sun was glittering in the bright waves of the Mersey, a fresh
breeze was flaunting and fluttering the half-loosened sails, and
the joyous sounds of seamen's voices were mingling with the clank of
capstans, and the measured stroke of oars.

It was full ten minutes after I awoke before I could remember how I came
there, and what had befallen me. Poor Santron, where is he now? was my
first thought, and it came with all the bitterness of self-reproach.

Could I have parted company with him under other circumstances, it would
not have grieved me deeply. His mocking, sarcastic spirit, the tone of
depreciation which he used towards everything and everybody, had gone
far to sour me with the world, and day by day I felt within me the
evil influences of his teachings. How different were they from poor
Gottfried's lessons, and the humble habits of those who lived beneath
them! Yet I was sorry, deeply sorry, that our separation should have
been thus, and almost wished I had stayed to share his fate, whatever it
might be.

While thus swayed by different impulses, now thinking of my old home at
Crown Point, now of Uncle Pat's thatched cabin, and again of Santron, I
strolled down to the wharf, and found myself in a considerable crowd of
people, who were all eagerly pressing forward to witness the embarkation
of several boatfuls of pressed seamen, who, strongly guarded and ironed,
were being conveyed to the _Athol_ tender, a large three-master, about a
mile off, down the river. To judge from the cut faces and ba