giving way to a mighty
fit of the blues, he happened to glance upward. _Corona Australis_
was blazing with unwonted brilliancy, and, it seemed to him, the
constellation was making signs to him from its signal station in the
heavens. Instantly he thought of the night that he and Jordan had
particularly noticed it, and of what the great-hearted man had said. Then
he thought of his friend; how unselfishly he had turned his face away
from the ship that would have carried him to a pleasanter country, and
had voluntarily gone back into that profound wilderness to work out
a trust which would require months of time; and he said to himself: "What
a selfish creature I am to repine, when I have been so blessed; when in
England an angel is waiting for me; when in the depths of Africa a brave
soul by his every act is teaching me lessons of self-abnegation."

A moment later another thought came to him which was a delight, and that
was that with every revolution of the screw he was drawing nearer to his
Grace. When an hour later he retired to his state-room he hummed a song as
he went, and the throbbing of the machinery and the wash of the seas
against the ship's beam made his lullaby, as the long roll of the steamer
rocked him to sleep.

As before stated, Sedgwick had written his wife fully at Port Natal. Two
days after he left, the steamer from the North came in. It remained five
days, and then started North again. Its mails were eighteen days in
reaching London.

Grace was looking for a letter from Port Natal, when Sedgwick's cable
from Melbourne reached her. She could not quite comprehend the matter
until, a day later, his letter came, and the next day his second cable,
announcing that he was just about to sail for San Francisco. That day she
did what she had not done since she left school--got a map of the world
and studied it until she put her finger on a spot between Sidney and New
Zealand, and said: "He is there now," and bent and kissed the place on
the map.

That evening she went over from her home to call upon Jack and Rose.
There she found a gentleman who, with his wife and daughter, were going
to sail two days later for Australia, via New York and San Francisco.
Their names were Hobart. Grace had known them ever since her father had
moved to London. They were talking of their proposed journey, when the
young lady said gaily: "Mrs. Sedgwick, come along with us as far as New
York, or San Francisco at least." At this th