about, you can't read it."

"Who wrote it? Mary?"

"No: father--saying what had happened to Mary, and telling me not to
come back home till things was pulled straight again. Here--here's what
he said--under the big grease-spot. 'If you can get continued employment
anywhere abroad, accept it instead of coming back. Better for you,
at your age, to be spared the sight of such sorrow as we are now
suffering.' Do you see that?"

"Yes, yes, I see. Ah! poor man! he couldn't give no kinder better
advice; and you--"

"Deserted from my ship. The devil was in me to be off on the tramp, and
father's letter did the rest. I got wild and desperate with the thought
of what had happened to Mary, and with knowing they were ashamed to see
me back again at home. So the night afore the ship sailed for England
I slipped into a shore-boat, and turned my back on salt-junk and the
boatswain's mate for the rest of my life."

"You don't mean to say you've done nothing but wander about in foreign
parts from that time to this?"

"I do, though! I'd a notion I should be shot for a deserter if I turned
up too soon in my own country. That kep' me away for ever so long, to
begin with. Then tramps' fever got into my head; and there was an end of
it."

"Tramps' fever! Mercy on me! what do you mean?"

"I mean this: when a man turns gypsy on his own account, as I did, and
tramps about through cold and hot, and winter and summer, not caring
where he goes or what becomes of him, that sort of life ends by getting
into his head, just like liquor does--except that it don't get out
again. It got into my head. It's in it new. Tramps' fever kep' me away
in the wild country. Tramps' fever will take me back there afore long.
Tramps' fever will lay me down, some day, in the lonesome places, with
my hand on my rifle and my face to the sky; and I shan't get up again
till the crows and vultures come and carry me off piecemeal."

"Lord bless us! how can you talk about yourself in that way?" cried Mrs.
Peckover, shuddering at the grim image which Mat's last words suggested.
"You're trying to make yourself out worse than you are. Surely you must
have thought of your father and sister sometimes--didn't you?"

"Think of them? Of course I did! But, mind ye, there come a time when I
as good as forgot them altogether. They seemed to get smeared out of my
head--like we used to smear old sums off our slates at school."

"More shame for you! Whatever else you forgot, y