ble.

"As she did so she cast an inquiring glance at the face of the stranger.

"`Who are you, friend?' asked Alec Dow. `I am as likely as any one to
tell you of the people in these parts.'

"`I am sure it must be,' exclaimed Jennie, coming forward and placing
her hand on the stranger's shoulder. `Don't you know me, Alec
Morrison?'

"`O Jennie, I thought you must be married long ago!' exclaimed the
sailor, jumping to his feet, `for I could not think that you would have
remembered me. And can you care for me now--a battered old hulk as I
am, with one arm and half-a-dozen bullets through me, besides I don't
know how many cutlass cuts and wounds from pikes?'

"`I have never ceased to hope that you would return,' was Jennie's
answer.

"As his daughter was the only being the old shepherd loved, he allowed
her to marry the wounded sailor, who took up his abode with them, and
served him faithfully till he died.

"Times went hard with Jennie and her husband, for Morrison's
constitution was shattered, and he could not work as hard as he wished.
They had one son, Alec, who grew up a fine manly boy. The sailor was
fond of spinning yarns, to which his son listened with rapt attention,
and longed to meet with the same adventures as his father.

"The boy was little more than twelve years old when his sailor father
died from the wounds he had received fighting his country's battles.

"Though his thoughts often wandered away over the wide ocean which he
had never yet seen, young Alec dutifully did his best to assist his
mother, but she did not long survive her husband, and he was left an
orphan.

"It would have been a hard matter for him living all alone to have made
a livelihood, so he sold two of his heifers to obtain an outfit, and
leaving the remainder as well as his cottage in charge of a relative of
his father's, he started off to the nearest seaport. He had no
difficulty in finding a ship, for he was as likely a lad as a captain
could wish to have on board.

"He sailed away to foreign lands, to the East and West Indies,
Australia, and the wide Pacific, and though he may have visited English
ports in the meantime, many a long year passed before he again saw the
home of his youth.

"He at length came back with a young wife, and some money in his pocket.
He had undoubtedly pictured in his imagination his cottage on the wild
moor as an earthly paradise, and had described it as such to his wife.
When she saw it,