t her arms about his neck and kissed him.

'Tell us,' said she, 'how you came to be the night man.'

He folded his arms and looked down and began his story.

'Years ago I had a great misfortune. I was a mere boy at the time. By
accident I killed another boy in play. It was an old gun we were playing
with and nobody knew it was loaded. I had often quarrelled with the
other boy--that is why they thought I had done it on purpose. There
was a dance that night. I had got up in the evening, crawled out of the
window and stolen away. We were in Rickard's stable. I remember how the
people ran out with lanterns. They would have hung me--some of them--or
given me the blue beech, if a boy friend had not hurried me away. It was
a terrible hour. I was stunned; I could say nothing. They drove me to
the 'Burg, the boy's father chasing us. I got over into Canada, walked
to Montreal and there went to sea. It was foolish, I know, but I was
only a boy of fifteen. I took another name; I began a new life. Nehemiah
Brower was like one dead. In 'Frisco I saw Ben Gilman. He had been a
school mate in Faraway. He put his hand on my shoulder and called me the
old name. It was hard to deny it--the hardest thing I ever did. I was
homesick; I wanted to ask him about my mother and father and my sister,
who was a baby when I left. I would have given my life to talk with him.
But I shook my head.

'"No," I said, "my name is not Brower. You are mistaken."

'Then I walked away and Nemy Brower stayed in his grave.

'Well, two years later we were cruising from Sidney to Van Dieman's
Land. One night there came a big storm. A shipmate was washed away in
the dark. We never saw him again. They found a letter in his box that
said his real name was Nehemiah Brower, son of David Brower, of Faraway,
NY, USA. I put it there, of course, and the captain wrote a letter to my
father about the death of his son. My old self was near done for and
the man Trumbull had a new lease of life. You see in my madness I had
convicted and executed myself.

He paused a moment. His mother put her hand upon his shoulder with a
word of gentle sympathy. Then he went on.

'Well, six years after I had gone away, one evening in midsummer, we
came into the harbour of Quebec. I had been long in the southern seas.
When I went ashore, on a day's leave, and wandered off in the fields and
got the smell of the north, I went out of my head--went crazy for a look
at the hills o' Faraway and