hung round my neck and sobbed when I went away the first time!
and yet--yet--within a year she left me." And he stopped for several
minutes, resting his head upon his hands. "At first I could get no trace
of her," he resumed. "Her friends knew nothing more of her than that
she had left the village suddenly. Gradually I found out the name of the
scoundrel who had seduced her away. He had bribed her friends so that
they were silent; but I overbribed them with the last money I had, and
I followed him and my wife on foot. I never found them, nor did I ever
know why she had deserted me for him. If I had only known the reason; if
I could have been told of my fault; if she had only written to say that
she was tired of me; that I was too old, too rough for her soft ways,--I
think I could have borne the heavy stroke the villain had dealt me
better. The end of my search was that I dropped down in the streets of
Liverpool, whither I thought I had tracked them, and was carried to
the hospital with brain-fever upon me. Two months afterward I came out
cured, and the sense of my loss was deadened within me, so that I
could go to sea again, which I did, before the mast, under the name of
Jackson, in a bark that traded to this coast here." And the old sailor
rose to his feet and turned abruptly away, leaving me sitting alone.

I saw that he did not wish to be followed, so I stayed where I was and
watched the gray twilight creep over the face of the sea, and the night
quickly succeed to it. Not a cloud had been in the sky all day long, and
as the darkness increased the stars came out, until the whole heavens
were studded with glittering gems.

Suddenly, low down, close to the sea, a point of light flickered and
disappeared, shone again for a moment, wavered and went out, only to
reappear and shine steadily. "A steamer's masthead light," I thought,
and ran to the house to give the news; but Jackson had already seen
the light, and pronounced that she had anchored until the morning. At
daybreak there she was, dipping her sides to the swell of the sea as
it rolled beneath her. It was my duty to go off to her in one of the
surf-boats belonging to the factory; and so I scrambled down the cliff
to the little strip of smooth beach that served us for a landing-place.

When I arrived there I found that the white-crested breakers were
heavier than I had thought they would be. However, there was the boat
lying on the beach with its prow toward the