ss, and the jaunty way he walked, with a slight roll, as if trying to
steady himself on a tossing deck, showed me that he was a sailor. We
were going to pass each other, when he looked hard at me, and I looked
hard at him. Suddenly it struck me that I knew his features; so I
stopped, and he stopped, and we gazed into one another's faces.

"Can you be brother Bill?" I exclaimed.

"Bill's my name, my hearty. And you!--are you brother Jack? Yes, I'm
sure you are!" And grasping my hand he wrung it till I thought he would
have wrung it off, while, half-laughing, half-crying for pleasure, he
asked, "How's father and mother, and Susan and Jane, and Mary and Dick,
and the rest of them; and little Tommy?"

He was the youngest of us, and could just toddle when Bill went away.
Thus he ran on, asking question after question, which I answered as well
as I could, while we went towards home at a pretty round trot--he eager
to get there and see them all again, and I almost as eager to have the
satisfaction of rushing in and shouting out, "Here's Bill come back
again!"

I need not describe the way Bill was received. No one seemed to think
that they could make enough of him. Mary, a small girl, sat on his knee
at supper, with one arm round his neck, and ever and anon gave him a
kiss and a hug, exclaiming, "Dear Bill, we are so glad you're come
back;" and Susan and Jane placed themselves one on each side that they
might the better help him to what was on the table; and we bigger boys
listened eagerly to all he said; and father watched him with pride, and
the light shone brighter than ever from mother's eyes as she gazed at
him; and little Tommy came toddling into the room in his night-gown
(having scrambled out of his crib) saying, "Tommy want see dat brodder
Bill really come home--all right--dere he is--hurrah!" and off he ran
again with Susan at his heels, but he had nimbly climbed into his nest
before she caught him.

As to myself, I looked at Bill with unbounded admiration, and eagerly
listened to every word which dropped from his lips. He had plenty to
talk about, and wonders of all sorts to describe, for he had been in the
Indian Sea, and visited China, and the west coast of America, and
several islands in the Pacific, and gone round the world. How he
rattled on! I thought Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier, Lord Anson and
Captain Cook were nothing to him--at all events, that I would far rather
hear the narrative of his a