ing Traverse's embrace and then gently
extricating himself and going to where Mrs. Rocke stood up, pale,
trembling and incredulous; she had not yet recovered from the great
shock of his unexpected appearance.

"Dear mother, won't you welcome me?" asked Herbert, going up to her. His
words dissolved the spell that bound her. Throwing her arms around his
neck and bursting into tears, she exclaimed:

"Oh, my son! my son! my sailor boy! my other child! how glad I am to
have you back once more! Welcome! To be sure you are welcome! Is my own
circulating blood welcome back to my heart? But sit you down and rest by
the fire; I will get your supper directly."

"Sweet mother, do not take the trouble. I supped twenty miles back,
where the stage stopped."

"And will you take nothing at all?"

"Nothing, dear mother, but your kind hand to kiss again and again!" said
the youth, pressing that hand to his lips and then allowing the widow to
put him into a chair right in front of the fire.

Traverse sat on one side of him and his mother on the other, each
holding a hand of his and gazing on him with mingled incredulity,
surprise and delight, as if, indeed, they could not realize his presence
except by devouring him with their eyes.

And for the next half hour all their talk was as wild and incoherent as
the conversation of long-parted friends suddenly brought together is apt
to be.

It was all made up of hasty questions, hurried one upon another, so as
to leave but little chance to have any of them answered, and wild
exclamations and disjointed sketches of travel, interrupted by frequent
ejaculations; yet through all the widow and her son, perhaps through the
quickness of their love as well as of their intellect, managed to get
some knowledge of the past three years of their "sailor boy's" life and
adventures, and they entirely vindicated his constancy when they learned
how frequently and regularly he had written, though they had never
received his letters.

"And now," said Herbert, looking from side to side from mother to son,
"I have told you all my adventures, I am dying to tell you something
that concerns yourselves."

"That concerns us?" exclaimed mother and son in a breath.

"Yes, ma'am; yes, sir; that concerns you both eminently. But, first of
all, let me ask how you are getting on at the present time."

"Oh, as usual," said the widow, smiling, for she did not wish to dampen
the spirits of her sailor boy; "as usual,