the dying officer. One morning we did not see the usual
blaze from the casement: but the old woman came out and shut the
shutters close, and drew down the blinds, and we saw as she re-entered
the house that she was weeping. That very morning the postman, Roger,
stopped at the little wicket, and rang the bell. He held in his hand a
very large, long letter, with words printed outside. The woman-servant
answered him, and took the letter, putting her apron to her eyes as he
spoke. It was the long-hoped-for, long-expected letter from the
Admiralty appointing the old officer to a ship. Alas, it came too late!
He who had so long waited in restless anxiety--who had so sickened with
disappointed hope--was gone to a world where the weary rest, and man's
toil and worth are neither neglected nor forgotten. We heard afterward
all his sad history, of which there are so many lamentable counterparts.
He had gone to sea while yet a child, had toiled, suffered, and fought
at the period when the very existence of his country depended on the
valor of the navy; but then came the peace, and with many another brave
man he had found himself on half-pay, alike unrewarded and forgotten.
Mr. St. Quentin--our gentleman who waited for the post--was a widower
with one only child, who was his idol. To educate and provide for her
had been his great anxiety. How could this be done on his half-pay? It
was impossible. True he read hard to become himself her teacher, but
there was much he could not impart to her; and with heroic self-denial
he placed her at an expensive school, and went himself almost without
the common necessaries of life to keep her there. Still the heavy burden
thus laid on his slender means obliged him to contract debts, and it was
agony to his just and upright spirit when he found it impossible to
defray them.

He had used great energy in his endeavors to get employed again, and
just before we made his acquaintance, "waiting for the post," had
received a promise that his services should be remembered. Both promise
and fulfillment came too late! The one awoke hopes which, daily
deferred, had preyed on the very springs of life, and taxed too sorely a
constitution much tried by toil and suffering in youth; the other came
when the heart it would have cheered had eased to feel the joy or sorrow
of mortality. His orphan daughter, a pretty gentle creature of
seventeen, was left totally destitute--almost friendless. If they had
relatives, a