sort of service, Kiah; nothing so fine. I'm nothing
grander than a West Indian planter.'

'Well, sir, it's welcome home to you, all the same.'

'Well, I suppose my country is home,' said the stranger, rather sadly,
'but I don't know about the welcome. I've outstayed the time for that,
Kiah, and there's no one now will care to see me back.'

'I wouldn't be too sure of that if I was you, sir, especially if you've
women folks belonging to you. It's wonderful, sir, how they keep a
man's place warm for him, and a deal more than we deserve, I say, that
go knocking about the world all our lives, and coming back useless old
hulks when we can't do for ourselves any longer. Why, there's my
sister Martha, with a man and children of her own to think about, and
yet, when I come back with my hand and a half and my timber toe,
"Kiah," says she, "you're kindly welcome, so you are, and you shall
have a chair by our fire as long as we have a fire ourselves, my dear."
And as for our young ladies, I doubt there'll be nobody sit in the
young master's place till he comes back himself to fill it.'

'Oh, you and your young master have been good brothers, I daresay,'
said the stranger, looking up at the singing lark with rather sad eyes.

'Not so extra particular for me, sir, though Martha and me was good
friends enough; and as for the young gentleman, the ladies aren't his
sisters but his aunts, you see, he having neither father nor mother,
brother nor sister. Bless 'em, they're that wrapped up in him; and yet
they haven't spoilt him, not they. "You see, Kiah," Miss Angel says to
me, "we feel like as if we must answer to his dear papa, our brother
that's dead, for how we bring up his boy; we daren't be pleasing
ourselves, Kiah," says she. Dear, now, that's one thing I'm bound to
own I miss down here, them coming in and out. But, if you'll believe
it, sir, I've got a letter Miss Angel wrote me herself. I got my
mate's missus, that's a fine scholar, to write to her for me, and there
come a beautiful answer back; leastways them as read it to me says it's
written like a book. I can make shift with a chapter of the Bible, but
I can't get on with handwriting, you see. But it sounds just like as
if she was talking to me, and she sends me a sovereign for a poor soul
that lost her husband in a brush in the Channel last month--she's that
feeling, Miss Angel, and she knows what it is to have them belonging to
her in danger.'

The gentle