ed his name when he was absent, and for a long time Mrs Martin
supposed that she tried to forget him, but her opinion changed on this
point one night when she overheard her mother praying with intense
earnestness and in affectionate terms that her dear Dick might yet be
saved. Still, however much or frequently Granny's thoughts might at any
time be distracted from their main channel, they invariably returned
thereto with the cheerful assurance that "_he_ would soon come now."

"You're ill, my boy," said Mrs Martin, after the first greetings were
over.

"Right you are, mother," said the worn-out man, sitting down with a
weary sigh. "I've done my best to fight it down, but it won't do."

"You must have the doctor, Fred."

"I've had the doctor already, mother. I parted with Isa Wentworth at
the bottom o' the stair, an' she will do me more good than dozens o'
doctors or gallons o' physic."

But Fred was wrong.

Not long afterwards the _Lively Poll_ arrived in port, and Stephen
Lockley hastened to announce his arrival to his wife.

Now it was the experience of Martha Lockley that if, on his regular
return to land for his eight days' holiday, after his eight weeks' spell
afloat, her handsome and genial husband went straight home, she was wont
to have a happy meeting; but if by any chance Stephen first paid a visit
to the Blue Boar public-house, she was pretty sure to have a miserable
meeting, and a more or less wretched time of it thereafter. A
conversation that Stephen had recently had with Fred Martin having made
an impression on him--deeper than he chose to admit even to himself--he
had made up his mind to go straight home this time.

"I'll be down by daybreak to see about them repairs," he said to Peter
Jay, as they left the _Lively Poll_ together, "and I'll go round by your
old friend, Widow Mooney's, and tell her to expect you some time
to-night."

Now Peter Jay was a single man, and lodged with Widow Mooney when on
shore. It was not, however, pure consideration for his mate or the
widow that influenced Lockley, but his love for the widow's little
invalid child, Eve, for whose benefit that North Sea skipper had, in the
kindness of his heart, made a special collection of deep-sea shells,
with some shreds of bright bunting.

Little Eve Mooney, thin, wasted, and sad, sat propped up with dirty
pillows, in a dirty bed, in a dirtier room, close to a broken and
paper-patched window that opened upon a coal-yard