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122 THE SAILORS RETURN.

had engaged on board some ship bound to a distant port,
and perhaps might never come back again. They were
partly right. He had gone straight across the country
to Liverpool, and had taken service ina Cunard steamer,
in which employment he had been ever since.

Shortly before our story opens he was on his homeward
voyage, and had been much taken with one of the
passengers, a pleasant, free-spoken gentleman, who made
many friends among the crew, and who, observing
William’s settled melancholy, tried at different times to
rouse him from it, but all in vain. At last one day the
passenger said to him, “My friend, I can see that you
have met with some great trouble. Nowlookat me. Do
T look like a man that has had great troubles 2”

* And yet,” returned the other, “I have had them. I
have had as great ones as you have, I don’t doubt; per-
haps greater. But still, thank God, I have worked my
way through them all, and there is not a happier man
alive than I am. Do you set to work too; not in the
dogged, desperate way that you are doing it now; for I
ean see that you are doing it. Don’t merely bear your
troubles, and let them crush you; but face them like a
man, and you'll get over them.”

“Tm afraid that can’t be,” replied William.

« Very likely it cannot,” answered the other, “if you are
afraid. But, come now, I don’t ask you to tell me your
story, ll just give you a sketch of mine, and see if it
does not show you what can be done. I was a wild lad.
I ruined myself, and my people. Happily my good
father was dead before the storm burst, or it would have
killed him, and I should have had his death on my
conscience ; but women will bend, where men would
break. My mother was reduced from wealth to poverty 3
she bore it like the woman that she is, and now, God be
praised, I can set her up again. I have had a hard fight
of it though. I worked my passage over to America.
T had many ups and downs, and many strange experiences.
Among other things I tried gold-digging, at which I was
moderately successful, and when I had scraped a little
together, I took to storekeeping, prospecting for miners,
much as they did for gold, and finding it a much more
paying concern. So here I am now, rich enough to pay
all the old debts, and with something more to go on with
afterwards, and to set my old mother up again, as well off
as she used to be. I’ve been to England once to get
things in train, but I have not let her know any thing
yet, for fear that something should happen to upset my
plans, and that would make things worse than ever, you
know. The only soul I’ve told is my sister—did I tell
you that I had a sister? However, I have, dear girl, andI
hunted her up, found her married, rather lower, perhaps,
than what she might have looked for in old times, but
still happily married to a good husband; told her how I
had got on, and could not help employing the first fruits of
my wealth in making her more comfortably off than she
had been. So profoundly, however, was the secret of my
good fortune to be kept, that it was not to be told even to
her husband, when he came home. He was a sailor like
yourself, and, like most of you sailors, was always for
saying whatever came uppermost. So my sister’s last
words to me, as I bid her farewell at the bridee-end, were,
| “Well, good-bye, I don’t like parting with you, but even
| if you were not going to America to finish up your busi-
ness there, you must not come to my house again; he’s

“Well, sir,” said William, “I can’t say as how you do.” |

| come home.’ And so Why, what now, man?” he
exclaimed, for William had gripped him by the breast of
his coat with both hands, as if he was a sack that he was
going to shake empty, and stood glaring at him like a
madman.

“Your name’s never Cole,” gasped William at length.

“Why, yes it is generally,” replied the other, “that’s
the name I was born with, and that’s the name I hope to
die with, though I can’t say that I have not changed it
occasionally in the rough time of my life; but I wish you
would let go of my coat.”

“Tord, have mercy upon me,” ejaculated William ; “I
was a miserable sinner to curse her like that, and never
give her a chance of speaking. What's your sister's
name?”

“Mary Runeckles,’ replied’ Cole, setting his coat
straight again.

“There then,” returned William, “your story have
bettered me of my trouble, wonderful it have. That’s
I found her surprising well off, when I come
| home one time. I get it into my head the things wasn’t
come by fairly. I watched her, I did; and I heard them
last words of yours at the bridge end; and then I felt
sure there was foul play somehow, and I laid my curse
on her, and J have never seen her since, no more she
haven’t me. Perhaps I’ve killed her,” continued he with
a sudden change of voice, “and that will be worse and
worse.”

Mr. Cole, as may be supposed, was no little astonished
at the turn which things had taken, but, to make a long
story short, the two brothers-in-law set off eastward im-
mediately on their return to Liverpool. As the reader
knows, they met with a disappointment at first. The
old home was broken up, and let to a stranger. “ What
had become of Ms. Runeckles?” they asked.

Nobody could tell; she had gone away suddenly, and
nobody had seen her since; but an old gentleman had
come to fetch her things.

* What sort of looking man was he?”

“Well, an oldish gentleman, with a round, good-
natured looking face, and quite white hair brushed off his
forehead.”

“That's father,” said William, and the two started at
once for the farm.

William’s heart beat somewhat fast as they drew near
the well-known door, and tears started to his eyes, as
Cole touched his sleeve, and pointed to a child’s wheel-
barrow standing by the side of the garden path. They
were on the right scent, it was Polly’s own barrow.

“Tl wait outside,” said Cole; “one at a time will be
enough for them.”

So William opened the door, and walked straight in.
There sat his father and mother on either side of the fire,
and the real Polly at her grandmother's knee.

* Polly!” he exclaimed, ‘father! mother! but where's
my dear wife? I know allnow. What a brute J was!”

The old couple jumped up, and flung their arms round
him. Polly dropped her book, and began to roar. The
sick woman in the chamber above knocked loudly on the
floor with the stick, which, in that primitive household,
served in the place of a bell.
| “Send him up,” she cried to the old lady who had
| hurried upstairs, “send him up. I don’t want any body

to break the news to me. I heard his voice. I heard
| him say ‘his dear wife.’ I know it’s all rightnow. Oh,

my wife.

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