with, and had returned a positive answer that no inquest had been held,
or any body found, which could by any possibility be that of the young
Englishman. The only alternative appeared to be that he had taken the
first opportunity to break all the old ties, and had slipped away to the
backwoods or to the States to commence life anew under an altered name.
Why he should do this no one professed to know, but that he had done it
appeared only too probable from the facts. Hence many a deep growl of
righteous anger rose from the brawny smacksmen when Mary with her pale
face and sorrow-sunken head passed along the quays on her way to her
daily marketing; and it is more than likely that if the missing man had
turned up in Brisport he might have met with some rough words or rougher
usage, unless he could give some very good reason for his strange
conduct. This popular view of the case never, however, occurred to the
simple trusting heart of the lonely girl, and as the years rolled by her
grief and her suspense were never for an instant tinged with a doubt as
to the good faith of the missing man. From youth she grew into middle
age, and from that into the autumn of her life, patient, long-suffering,
and faithful, doing good as far as lay in her power, and waiting humbly
until fate should restore either in this world or the next that which it
had so mysteriously deprived her of.

In the meantime neither the opinion held by the minority that John
Huxford was dead, nor that of the majority, which pronounced him to be
faithless, represented the true state of the case. Still alive, and of
stainless honour, he had yet been singled out by fortune as her victim
in one of those strange freaks which are of such rare occurrence, and so
beyond the general experience, that they might be put by as incredible,
had we not the most trustworthy evidence of their occasional
possibility.

Landing at Quebec, with his heart full of hope and courage, John
selected a dingy room in a back street, where the terms were less
exorbitant than elsewhere, and conveyed thither the two boxes which
contained his worldly goods. After taking up his quarters there he had
half a mind to change again, for the landlady and the fellow-lodgers
were by no means to his taste; but the Montreal coach started within a
day or two, and he consoled himself by the thought that the discomfort
would only last for that short time. Having written home to Mary to
announce his safe a