Part 2 — CHAPTER I. (continued 3)

“Won’t those I threw in fit you?” asked our host.

“I’ve got them. The least bit too large. A thousand thanks.”

“Can you dance in them?”

“I’ll try,” replied Dennis, and judging by the sound, he did try then and there, singing as he twirled,

“Bad luck to this marching, Pipe-claying and starching, How neat one must be to be killed by the French!”

But O’Brien’s audible delight and the progress of the song were checked by the lieutenant, who had dressed himself, and was now in the sitting-room.

“O’Brien!”

“Sorr!”

“If Mr. O’Moore is not ready, I must go without him.”

“He’s ready and waiting, sorr,” replied O’Brien.

“Have ye got a pocket-handkerchief, Master Dennis, dear? There’s the flower for your coat. Ye’ll be apt to give it away, maybe; let me use a small pin. Did the master not find ye any gloves? Now av the squire saw ye, its a proud man he’d be! Will I give the young gentleman one of your hats, sorr?”

“Yes, of course. Be quick! So there you are at last, you young puppy. Bless me! how like the squire you are.”

The squire must have been amazingly handsome, I thought, as I gazed admiringly at my comrade. Our staring made him shy, and as he blushed and touched up the stephanotis in his buttonhole, the engineer changed the subject by saying, “Talking of the squire, is it true, Dennis, what Jack tells me about the twenty pounds? Did he really forget to put it in?”

“As true as gospel,” said Dennis, and taking up the tails of his coat he waltzed round the room to the tune of

“They say some disaster Befell the paymaster, On my conscience, I think that the money’s not there!”

I stood out on the verandah to see them off, Dennis singing and chaffing and chattering to the last. He waved his hat to me as his friend gathered

It was a glorious night, despite the oppressive heat and the almost intolerable biting of mosquitoes and sandflies. In the wake of the departing trap flew a solitary beetle, making a noise exactly like a scissor-grinder at work. Soft and silent moths—some as big as small birds—went past my face, I fear to the hanging lamp behind me. Passing footfalls echoed bluntly from the wooden pavement, and in the far-away distance the bull-frogs croaked monotonously. And down below, as I looked upon the trees, I could see fireflies coming and going, like pulsations of light, amongst the leaves.

O’Brien waited on me with the utmost care and civility; served me an excellent supper with plenty of ice and cooling drinks, and taught me the use of the “swizzle stick” for mixing them. I am sure he did not omit a thing he could think of for my comfort. He had been gone for some time, and I had been writing letters, turning over the engineer’s books, and finally dozing in his chair, when I was startled by sounds from his bedroom, as if O’Brien were engaged, first in high argument, and then in deadly struggle with some intruder. I rushed to his assistance, and found him alone, stamping vehemently on the floor.

“What’s the matter?” said I.

“Matther is it? Murther’s the matther,” and he gave another vicious stamp, and then took a stride that nearly cost him his balance, and gave another. “I beg yor pardon, sorr; but it’s the cockroaches. The place swarms wid ’em. Av they’d keep peaceably below, now, but invading the master’s bedroom—that’s for ye, ye thief!” and he stamped again.

“The creatures here are a great plague,” said I, slapping a mosquito upon my forehead.

“And that as true a word as your honour ever spoke. They’re murderous no less! Many’s the time I’m wishing myself back in old Ireland, where there’s no venomous beasts at all, at all. Arrah! Would ye, ye skulking ——”

I left him stamping and streaming with perspiration, but labouring loyally on in a temperature where labour was little short of heroism.

I went back to my chair, and began to think over my prospects. It is a disadvantage of idleness that one wearies oneself with thinking, though one cannot act. I wondered how the prosperous sugar-planter was receiving Dennis, and whether he would do more for him than one’s rich relations are apt to do. The stars began to pale in the dawn without my being any the wiser for my speculations, and then my friends came home. The young officer was full of hopes

“How did you get on with your cousin?” I asked. The reply confounded me.

“Oh, charmingly! Dances like a fairy. I say, Willie, as a mere matter of natural history, d’ye believe any other human being ever had such feet?”

A vague wonder crept into my brain whether the cousin could possibly have become half a nigger, from the climate, which really felt capable of anything, and have developed feet like our friend the pilot; but I was diverted from this speculation by seeing that Dennis was clapping his pockets and hunting for something.

“What have you lost now?” asked his friend.

“My pocket-handkerchief. Ah, there it is!” and he drew it from within his waistcoat, and with it came his gloves, and a third one, and they fell on the floor. As he picked the odd one up the lieutenant laughed.

“What size does she wear, Dennis—sixes?”

“Five and three-quarters—long fingers; so she tells me.” He sighed, and then wandered to the window, whistling “Robin Adair.”

“Now, Dennis, you promised me to go straight to

“All right, Willie. Good-night, and a thousand thanks to you. It’s been a great evening—I never was so happy in my life. Come along, Jack.”

And off he went, tossing his head and singing to the air he had been whistling,

“Who in the song so sweet? Eileen aroon! Who in the dance so fleet? Eileen aroon! Dear were her charms to me, Dearer her laughter free, Dearest her constancy, Eileen aroon!”

“She’ll be married to a sugar-planter before you’ve cut your wisdom teeth!” bawled the engineer from his bedroom.

“Will she?” retorted Dennis, and half-laughing, half-sentimentally, he sang on louder than before,

“Were she no longer true, Eileen aroon! What should her lover do? Eileen aroon! Fly with his broken chain, Far o’er the bounding main, Never to love again, Eileen aroon!”

Willie made no reply. He evidently meant to

It was thus that I failed at first to hear when Dennis began to talk to somebody out of the window. But when I lifted my head I could hear what he said, and from the context I gathered that the other speaker was no less than Alister, who, having taken his sleep early in the night, was now refreshing himself by a stroll at dawn. That they were squabbling with unusual vehemence was too patent, and I was at once inclined to lay the blame on Dennis, who ought, I felt, to have been brimming over with generous sympathy, considering how comfortable we had been, and poor Alister had not. But I soon discovered that the matter was no personal one, being neither more nor less than an indignant discussion as to whether the air which Dennis was singing was “Scotch” or “Irish.” As I only caught the Irish side of the argument, I am not qualified to pronounce any opinion.

“Of course facts are facts, no one denies that. And it’s likely enough your grandmother sang ‘Robin Adair’ to it, and your great-grandmother too, rest her soul! But it would take an uncommonly great- of mine to have sung it when it was new, for it’s one of the oldest of old Irish airs.”

“Stole it of course! as they did plenty more in those times—cattle and what not. I’d forgive them the theft, if they hadn’t spoilt the tune with a nasty jerk or two that murders the tender grace of it intirely.”

“Alister, me boy! You’re not going? Ye’re not cross, are ye? Faith, I’d give my life for ye, but I can’t give ye Eileen aroon. Come in and have some swizzle! We’re in the height of luxury here, and hospitality as well, and you’ll be as welcome as daylight.”

“Up so late? Up so early you mean! Ah, don’t put on that air of incorruptible morality. Wait now till I get in on the one side of my hammock and out at the other, and I’ll look as early-rising-proud as yourself. Alister! Alister dear!——”

Through all this the engineer made no sign, and it struck me how wise he was, so I pulled the hammock round me again and fell asleep; not for long, I fancy, for those intolerable sandflies woke me once more before Dennis had turned in.

I looked out and saw him still at the window, his

“Youth must with time decay, Eileen aroon! Beauty must fade away, Eileen aroon! Castles are sacked in war, Chieftains are scattered far, Truth is a fixèd star, Eileen aroon!”

“Which is why I remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark, And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.” Bret Harte.

Alister did more than pick pink-pale oleanders by the dyke side that morning. His business with the captain was soon despatched, and in the course of it he “fore-gathered,” as he called it, with the man of business who had spoken to us on the night of the great fire, and whose own warehouse was in ruins. He proved to be a Scotchman by birth, and a man of energy (not a common quality in the tropics), and he was already busy about retrieving his fortune. The hasty repair of part of the building, in which to secure some salvage, and other similar matters, was his first object; and he complained bitterly of the difficulty of inducing any of the coloured gentlemen to do a “fair day’s work

Several Chinamen were already busy among the ruins of the burnt houses, as we saw, and it was Chinese labour that Alister’s friend had resolved to employ; but he seemed to think that, though industrious, those smiling, smooth-faced individuals, who looked as if they had come to life off one of my mother’s old tea-cups, were not to be trusted alone among the salvage.

“Every thief among ’em ’s as good as a conjurer,” he declared, “and can conceal just anything up his sleeve.”

Thus it came about that when Dennis and I went down to the stelling to meet Alister, as we had agreed, and delivered the messages of hospitality with which the young engineer and Dennis’s cousin had charged us, we found that he had made an engagement to help the burnt-out store-owner for such time as we should be out of seamen’s work, on terms which were to include his board and lodging.

“Alister, dear! I admire ye with all me heart,” said Dennis impetuously. “I never saw such an

“There’s not a doubt about it,” replied Alister complacently. “And I’ll tell ye more. Find me arty grand work, if it’s at the other end of the airth, whether it’s digging a dyke in the desert, or bigging a mountain up to the moon, and I’ll find ye an Aberdeenshire man not far from the head of it.”

Dennis’s face seemed to twitch with a dozen quick thoughts and smiles, as Alister turned away to meet his new employer, who had just appeared on the stelling.

“They have wonderful qualities,” he said gently. “I envy them, I can tell ye, Jack. What’s an idle lout like me good for? Will I ever be able to make a home for myself, or for any one else? They do!” He spoke earnestly, and then suddenly relapsing into an imitation of Alister’s accent, which was his latest joke, he added with twinkling eyes, “and they save a wee in wages to their ain trumpeters—whiles!”

And having drawled out the word “whiles” to the uttermost possible length, he suddenly began to snap his fingers and dance an Irish jig upon the wooden planks of the stelling. This performance

Mr. Macdonald (the store-owner) seemed, however, to think that they required pretty close watching, and I do not think he would have been willing to let Alister go back with us to luncheon at Willie’s, but for his appreciation of social rank. It was obvious that it did Alister no harm that he had a friend in an officer of her Majesty’s Service, and a comrade in the nephew of a sugar-planter of the uppermost level of Demerara society.

We three held a fresh council as we sat with the young engineer. He and Alister got on admirably, and he threw himself into our affairs with wonderful kindness. One point he disposed of at once, and that was my fate! There could be no question, he said, that my duty was to get back to Halifax, “report myself” to Uncle Henry’s agent there, and then go home.

“You’re ruthlessly dismembering the Shamrock, Willie,” Dennis objected.

“I don’t see that. You’re not to stay here, for instance.”

“You’re mighty positive,” said Dennis, blushing.

“Of course I am. I wouldn’t encourage you to waste sentiment anyhow; and the West Indies is no latitude for boys, to go on with. And you know as well as I do, that it’s rather more than time the squire started you in life. You must go home, Dennis!”

“If I do, I go with Jack. And what about Alister?”

The young officer tugged his moustaches right and left. Then he said, “If I were exactly in your place, Auchterlay——”

“Well, sir?” said Alister, for he had hesitated.

—“I should—enlist in the Royal Engineers.”

“Nothing like gunpowder,” whispered Dennis to me. I kicked him in return.

The pros and cons of the matter were not lengthy. If Alister enlisted in any regiment, the two advantages of good behaviour and good education would tell towards his advancement more rapidly and more certainly than perhaps in any other line of life. If he enlisted into a scientific corps, the chance of being almost immediately employed as a clerk was good, very much of the work would be interesting to an educated and

He said a good deal, but the matter really lay in small compass. The profession of arms is not highly paid. It was true that the pay was poor enough as a seaman, and the life far harder, but then he was only bound for each voyage. At other times he was his own master, and having

“Then why not stick together?” cried Dennis. “Make your way up to Halifax with us, Alister dear. Maybe you’ll find your cousin at home this time, and if not, at the worst, there’s the captain of our old ship promised ye employment. Who knows but we’ll all go home in her together? Ah, let’s keep the Shamrock whole if we can.”

“But you see, Dennis,” said the lieutenant, “Alister would regard a voyage to England as a step backward, as far as his objects are concerned.”

Dennis always maintained that you could never contrive to agree with Alister so closely that he would not find room to differ from you.

So he nudged me again (and I kicked him once more), when Alister began to explain that he wouldn’t just say that, for that during the two or three days when he was idle at Liverpool he had been into a free library to look at the papers, and had had a few words of converse with a decent kind of an old body, who was a care-taker in a

“I wish I hadn’t broken that gorgeous lump of coral Alfonso gave me,” said Dennis. “But it’s as brittle as egg-shell, though I rather fancy the half of it would astonish most museums. You’re a wonderful boy, Alister! Ah, we’ll all live to see the day when you’re a millionaire, laying the foundation-stone of some of these big things the Aberdeen men build, and speechifying away to the rising generation of how ye began life with nothing but a stuffed Demerary parrot in your pocket. Willie, can’t ye lend me some kind of a gun, that I may get him a few of these highly-painted fowl of the air? If I had but old Barney at my elbow now—God rest his soul!—we’d give a good account of ourselves among the cockatoos. Many’s the lot of sea-birds we’ve brought home in the hooker to stuff the family pillows. But I’m no hand at preparing a bird for stuffing.”

“I’ll cure them,” said I; “the school-master taught me.”

“Then we’re complete entirely, and Alister ‘ll die Provost of Aberdeen. Haven’t I got the whole plan in my head? (And it’s the first of the O’Moores that ever developed a genius for business!) Swap crimson macaws with green breasts in Liverpool for cheap fizzing drinks; trade them in the thirsty tropics for palm-oil; steer for the north pole, and retail that to the oleaginous Esquimaux for furs; sell them in Paris in the autumn for what’s left of the summer fashions, and bring these back to the ladies of Demerary; buy——”

“Dennis! stop that chattering,” cried our host; “there’s some one at the door.”

We listened. There was a disturbance below stairs, and the young officer opened the door and shouted for his servant, on which O’Brien came up three at a time.

“What is it, O’Brien?”

“A Chinese, your honour. I asked him his business, and not a word but gibberish will he let out of him. But he’s brought no papers nor parcels at all, and sorra peep will I let him have of your honour’s room. The haythen thief!”

But even as O’Brien spoke, a Chinaman, in a

“Who are you?” asked the engineer peremptorily.

“Ah-Fo,” was the reply, and the Chinaman bowed low.

“You can understand English, if you can’t speak it, eh?”

The Chinaman smiled. His eyes rolled round the room till he caught sight of Alister, then suddenly producing three letters, fanwise, as if he were holding a hand at whist, he jerked up the centre one, like a “forced” card in a trick, and said softly, “For you”—and still looking round with the others in his hand, he added, “For two; allee same as you,” and as Alister distributed them to Dennis and me, his wooden face took a few wrinkles of contempt, and he added, “One nigger bringee. Mister Macdonald, he send me.”

After this explanation he stood quite still. Even his face was unmoved, but his eyes went round and to every corner of the room. I was so absorbed in watching him that Dennis was reading his letter aloud before I had opened mine. But they were all alike, with the exception of our names. They were on pink paper, and highly scented. This was Dennis O’Moore’s:

“Hymeneal.—Mr. Alfonso St. Vincent and Miss

“Oh, botheration! It’s six weeks hence,” said Dennis. “Will we be here, I wonder?”

“We’ll go if we are.” “Poor old Alfonso!” “Well done, Alfonso!” Such were our sentiments, and we expressed them in three polite notes, which the Chinaman instantaneously absorbed into some part of his person, and having put the hand with which he took them to his head and bowed lowly as before, he went away. And O’Brien, giving one vicious dust with his coat-sleeve of the door-post, which Ah-Fo had contaminated by a passing touch, followed the “heathen thief” to see him safe off the premises.

“That’s a strange race, now ——” began Alister, but I ran to the window, for Dennis was on the balcony watching for the Chinaman, and remembering the scene on the stelling, I anticipated fun.

“Hi, there! Fe-fo-fum, or whatever it is that they call ye!”

Ah-Fo looked up with a smile of delighted recognition, which, as Dennis gave a few preliminary stamps, and began to whistle and shuffle, expanded

“Look here, Dennis,” said our host; “we shall have a crowd collecting if you go on with this tomfoolery. Send him off.”

“All right, old fellow. Beg your pardon. Good-bye, Te-to-tum.”

It was not a respectful farewell, but there is a freemasonry of friendliness apart from words. Dennis had a kindly heart toward his fellow-creatures everywhere, and I never knew his fellow-creatures fail to find it out.

“Good-bye,” said Ah-Fo, lingeringly.

“Good-bye again. I say, old mandarin,” added the incorrigible Dennis, leaning confidentially over the balcony, “got on pretty well below there? Or did O’Brien keep the tail of his eye too tight on ye? Did ye manage to coax a greatcoat of a hall-table or any other trifle of the kind up those sleeves of yours?”

This time Ah-Fo looked genuinely bewildered, but he gazed at Dennis as if he would have given anything to understand him.

“Uppee sleevee—you know?” said Dennis, illustrating his meaning by signs. (“Chinese is a mighty easy language, Willie, I find, when you’re used to it.”)

A grin of intelligence spread from ear to ear on Ah-Fo’s countenance.

“Eyah!” said he, and with one jerk he produced our three letters, fan-fashion, in his right hand, and then they vanished as quickly, and he clapped his empty palms and cried, “Ha, ha! Ha, ha!”

“It’s clever, there’s no denying,” said Alister, “but it’s an uncanny kind of cleverness.”

Something uncannier was to come. Ah-Fo had stood irresolute for a minute or two, then he appeared to make up his mind, and coming close under the balcony he smiled at Dennis and said, “You lookee here.” Then feeling rapidly in the inner part of his dress he brought out a common needle, which he held up to us, then pricked his finger to show that it was sharp, and held it up again, crying, “You see?”

“I see,” said Dennis. “Needle. Allee same as pin, barring that a pin’s got a head with no eye in it, and a needle’s got an eye with no head to it.”

“You no talkee, you lookee,” pleaded Ah-Fo.

“One for you, Dennis,” laughed the engineer. We looked, and Ah-Fo put the needle into his mouth and swallowed it. He gave himself a pat or two and made some grimaces to show that it felt rather prickly going down, and then he produced a second needle, and tested and then swallowed that. In this way he seemed to swallow twelve needles, nor, with the closest watching, could we detect that they went anywhere but into his mouth.

“Will he make it a baker’s dozen, I wonder?” gasped Dennis.

But this time Ah-Fo produced a small ball of thread, and it followed the needles, after which he doubled himself up in uneasy contortions, which sent us into fits of laughter. Then he put his fingers into his mouth—we watched closely—and slowly, yard after yard, he drew forth the unwound thread, and all the twelve needles were upon it. And whilst we were clapping and cheering him, both needles and thread disappeared as before.

Ah-Fo was evidently pleased by our approval, and by the shower of coins with which our host rewarded his performance, but when he had disposed of them in his own mysterious fashion, some source of discontent seemed yet to remain. He looked sadly at Dennis and said, “Ah-Fo like to do so, allee same as you.” And then began gravely to shuffle his feet about, in vain efforts, as became evident, to dance an Irish jig. We tried to stifle our laughter, but he was mournfully conscious of his own failure, and, when Dennis whistled the tune, seemed to abandon the task in despair, and console himself by an effort to recall the original performance. After standing for a few seconds with his eyes shut and his head thrown back, so that his pig-tail nearly touched the ground, the scene appeared to return to his memory. “Eyah!”

“Don’t forget the letters. Uppee sleevee, old Tea-tray!” roared Dennis.

Ah-Fo flirted them out once more. “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed he, and went finally away.

“Das Haar trennt.”—German Proverb.

We three were not able to be present at Alfonso’s wedding, for the very good reason that we were no longer in British Guiana. But the day we sailed for Halifax, Alfonso and his Georgiana came down to see us on the stelling. “Georgiana” was as black as a coal, but Alfonso had not boasted without reason of the cut of her clothes. She had an upright pretty figure, and her dress fitted it to perfection. It was a white dress, and she had a very gorgeous parasol, deeply fringed, and she wore a kerchief of many colours round her shoulders, and an equally bright silk one cleverly twisted into a little cap on her woolly head. Her costume was, in short, very gay indeed.

“Out of all the bounds of nature and feminine modesty,” said Alister.

“Of your grandmother’s nature and modesty, maybe,” retorted Dennis. “But she’s no gayer than the birds of the neighbourhood, anyway, and she’s as neat,

In short, Dennis approved of Alfonso’s bride, and I think the lady was conscious of it. She had a soft voice, and very gentle manners, and to Dennis she chatted away so briskly that I wondered what she could have found to talk about, till I discovered from what Dennis said to Alister afterwards, that the subject of her conversation was Alfonso’s professional prospects.

“Look here, Alister dear,” said Dennis; “don’t be bothering yourself whether she employs your aunt’s dressmaker or no, but when you’re about half-way up that ladder of success that I’ll never be climbing (or I’d do it myself), say a good word for Alfonso to some of these Scotch captains with big ships, that want a steward and stewardess. That’s what she’s got her eye on for Alfonso, and Alfonso has been a good friend to us.”

“I’ll mind,” said Alister. And he did. For (to use his own expression) our Scotch comrade was “aye better than his word.”

Dennis O’Moore’s cousin behaved very kindly to us. He was not only willing to find Dennis the money which the squire had failed to send, but he would have advanced my passage-money to Halifax. I declined the offer for two reasons. In the first

The elderly cousin did not quite approve of this, but the engineer officer warmly supported Dennis, and he was also upheld in a quarter where praise was still dearer to him, as I knew, for he took me into his confidence, when his feelings became more than he could comfortably keep to himself.

“Perhaps she won’t like your being a common sailor, Dennis,” I had said, “and you know Alister and I shall quite understand about it. We know well enough what a true mate you’ve been to us, and Alister was talking to me about it last night. He said he didn’t like to say anything to you, as he wouldn’t take the liberty of alluding to the young lady, but he’s quite sure she won’t like it, and I think so too.”

I said more than I might otherwise have done, because I was very much impressed by Alister’s unusual vehemence on the subject. He seldom indeed said a word that was less than a boast of Scotland in general, and Aberdeenshire in particular, but on this

“Alister has a fine heart,” said Dennis, “but you may tell him I told her,” and he paused.

“What did she say?” I asked anxiously.

“She said,” answered Dennis slowly, “that she’d small belief that a girl could tell if a man were true or no by what he seemed as a lover, but there was something to be done in the way of judging of his heart by seeing if he was kind with his kith and faithful to his friends.”

It took me two or three revolutions of my brain to perceive how this answer bore upon the question,

“A man,” he said sententiously, “that has been blessed with a guid mother, and that gives the love of his heart to a guid woman, may aye gang through the ills o’ this life like the children of Israel through the Red Sea, with a wall on’s right hand and a wall on’s left.”

But it was plain to be seen that the young lady approved of Dennis O’Moore’s resolve, when she made us three scarlet night-caps for deck-wear, with a tiny shamrock embroidered on the front of each.

Indeed, as to clothes and comforts of all sorts, we began our homeward voyage in a greatly renovated condition, thanks to our friends. The many kindnesses of the engineer officer were only matched by his brusque annoyance if we “made a fuss about nothing,” and between these, and what the sugar-planter thought due to his relative, and what the sugar-planter’s daughter did for the sake of Dennis, the only difficulty was to get our kits stowed within reasonable seamen’s limits. The sugar-planter’s influence was of course invaluable to us in the choice of a ship, and we were very fortunate. The evening we went on board I accompanied Dennis to his cousin’s house to bid good-bye, and when we left,

About twenty yards back I saw him, as I thought, mixed up in some way with an oleander-bush in pink blossom, but, coming nearer, I found that it was Eileen’s grey-green dress with the pink bows, which, like a slackened sail, was flapping against him in the evening breeze, as he knelt in front of her.

“Dennis,” said I, not too loud; not loud enough in fact, for they did not hear me; and all that Dennis said was, “Take plenty, Darlin’!”

He was kneeling up, and holding back some of the muslin and ribbons with one hand, whilst with the other he held out a forelock of his black curls, and she cut it off with the scissors out of the sailor’s housewife which she had made for him. I turned my back and called louder.

“I know, Jack. I’m coming this instant,” said Dennis.

The night was noisy with the croaking of frogs, the whirring and whizzing of insects, the cheeping of bats, and the distant cries of birds, but Dennis and Eileen were silent. Then she called out, “Good-bye, Jack, God bless you.”

“Good-bye, Miss Eileen, and God bless you,” said I, feeling nearly as miserable as if I were in love myself. And then we ran all the rest of the way to the stelling.

Alister was already on board, and the young officer was there to bid us God speed, and Dennis was cheerful almost to noisiness.

But when the shores of British Guiana had become a muddy-looking horizon line, I found him, with his cropped forehead pressed to the open housewife, shedding bitter tears among the new needles and buttons.

“Zur tiefen Ruh, wie er sich auch gefunden. * * * * * * Sein Geist ist’s, der mich ruft.” Wallenstein’s Tod.

Not the least troublesome part of our enlarged kit was the collection of gay-plumaged birds. Their preservation was by no means complete, and I continued it at sea. But between climate and creatures, the destructiveness of the tropics is distracting to the collector, and one or two of my finest specimens fell into heaps of mangled feathers, dust, and hideous larvæ under my eyes. It was Dennis O’Moore’s collection. He and his engineer friend were both good shots, and they had made an expedition on purpose to get these birds for Alister. There were some most splendid specimens, and the grandest of all, to my thinking, was a Roseate Spoonbill, a wading, fish-catching bird of all shades of rose, from pale pink to crimson. Even his long horny legs were red. But he was not a pleasant subject for my part of the work. Water-Lily at her worst, before we got rid of the fish cargo.

Knowing that he had got them for Alister, I was rather surprised one day when Dennis began picking out some of the rarest birds and put them aside. It was so unlike him to keep things for himself. But as he turned over the specimens, he began to ask me about Cripple Charlie, whose letter he had read. Meanwhile he kept selecting specimens, and then, returning them to the main body again, “Ah, we mustn’t be robbing Alister, or he’ll never die Provost of Aberdeen.” In the end he had gathered a very choice and gorgeous little lot, and then I discovered their destination. “We’ll get them set up when we get home,” he said; “I hope Charlie ’ll like ’em. They’ll put the old puffin’s nose out of joint, anyway, for as big as it is!”

Our ship was a steamship, a well-found vessel, and we made a good passage. The first mate was an educated man, and fond of science. He kept a meteorological log, and the pleasantest work we ever did was in helping him to take observations. We became very much bitten with the subject, and I bought three pickle-bottles from the cook, and filled them with gulf-weed and other curiosities for Charlie, and stowed these away with the birds.

Dennis found another letter from his father await

Nothing can make the North Atlantic a pleasant sea. Of the beauty and variety of warmer waters we had nothing, but we had the excitement of some rough weather, and a good deal of sociability and singing when it was fair, and we were very glad to be with our old mates again, and yet more glad that every knot on our course was a step nearer home. Dennis and I were not idle because we were independent, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. As to Alister, there was no difficulty in seeing how well he stood with the red-bearded captain, and how good a friend his own energy and perseverance (with perhaps some touch of clannishness to boot) had gained for him. Dennis and I always shared his watches, and they were generally devoted to the discussing and re-discussing

From the day that Alister had heard Dennis chatter to the squaw, through all our ups and downs, at sea and ashore, he had never flagged in his persistent profiting by Dennis’s offer to teach him to speak French. It was not, perhaps, a very scholarly method which they pursued, but we had no time for study, so Dennis started Alister every day with a new word or sentence, and Alister hammered this into his head as he went about his work, and recapitulated what he had learned before. By the time we were on our homeward voyage, the sentences had become very complex, and it seemed probable that Alister’s ambition to take part in a “two-handed crack” in French with his teacher, before the shamrock fell to pieces, would be realized.

“What he has learnt is wonderful, I can tell ye,” said Dennis to me, “but his accent’s horrid! And we’d get on faster than we do if he didn’t argue every step we go, though he doesn’t know a word that I’ve not taught him.”

But far funnier than Alister’s corrections of his teacher, was a curious jealousy which the boatswain had of the Scotch lad’s new accomplishment. We could not quite make out the grounds of it, except that the boatswain himself had learned one or two parly voo when he was in service at the boys’ school, and he was jealously careful of the importance which his shreds and scraps of education gave him in the eyes of the ordinary uneducated seaman. With Dennis and me he was uniformly friendly, and he was a most entertaining companion.

Owing to head winds, our passage was longer than the average. A strange thing happened towards the end of it. We had turned in for sleep one night, when I woke to the consciousness that Dennis had got out of his berth, and was climbing past mine, but I was so sleepy that I did not speak, and was only sure that it was not a dream, when Alister and I went on deck for the next watch, and found Dennis walking up and down in the morning mist.

“Have you had no sleep?” I asked, for his face looked haggard.

“I couldn’t. For dreaming,” he said, awkwardly.

I laughed at him.

“What have you been dreaming about?”

“Don’t laugh, Jack. I dreamt of Barney.”

“Well, that’s natural enough, Dennis. This end of the voyage must recall the poor fellow.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it was a kindly dream. But I dreamed he’d an old woman’s bonnet on and a handkerchief tied over it. It haunts me.”

“Go back to bed,” I advised. “Perhaps you’ll dream of him again looking like himself, and that will put this out of your head.”

Dennis took my advice, and I stood Alister’s watch with him, and by and by Dennis appeared on deck again looking more at ease.

“Did you dream of him again?” I asked. He nodded.

“I did—just his own dear self. But he was sitting alone on the edge of some wharf gazing down into the water, and not a look could I get out of him till I woke.”

The following morning Dennis was still sound asleep when I rose and went on deck. The coast of Ireland was just coming into sight through the haze when he joined me, but before pointing it out to him, I felt curious to know whether he had dreamed a third time of old Barney.

“Not I,” said he; “all I dreamed of was a big rock standing up out of the sea, and two children sitting on it had hold of each other’s hands.”

“Children you know?”

“Oh dear, no! Just a little barefoot brother and sister.”

He seemed to wish to drop the subject, and at this moment a gleam of sunshine lit up the distant coast-line with such ethereal tints, that I did not God bless the Emerald Isle!”

We reached Liverpool about four o’clock in the afternoon, and as we drew up alongside of the old wharf, my first thought was to look for Biddy Macartney. Alister had to remain on board for a time, but Dennis came willingly with me in search of the old woman and her coffee-barrow. At last we betook ourselves to the dock-gatekeeper, to make inquiries, and from him we heard a sad story. The old woman had “failed a deal of late,” he said. He “had heard she wasn’t right in her mind, but whether they’d shifted her to a ’sylum or not, he couldn’t say.” If she was at home, she was at an address which he gave us.

“Will you go, Dennis? I must. At once.”

“Of course.”

Biddy was at home, and never whilst I live can I forget the “home.” Four blocks of high houses enclosed a small court into which there was one entrance, an archway through one of the buildings. All the houses opened into the court. There were no back-doors, and no back premises whatever. All the dirt and (as to washing) all the cleanliness of a crowded community living in rooms in flats, the quarrelling and the love-making, the old people’s resting, and the

Roughly enough, it is true, we were directed to one of the houses, the almost intolerable stench of which increased as we went up the stairs. By the help of one inmate and another, we made our way to Biddy’s door, and then we found it locked.

“The missis ’ll be out,” said a deformed girl who was pulling herself along by the balustrades. She was decent-looking and spoke civilly, so I ventured to ask, “Do you mean that old Biddy is out?”

“Nay, not Biddy. The woman that sees to her. When she’s got to go out she locks t’ old lass up to be safe,” and volunteering no further help, the girl rested for a minute against the wall, with her hand to her side, and then dragged herself into one of the rooms, and shut the door in our faces.

The court without and the houses within already resounded so to the squalling of children, that I paid no attention to the fact that more of this particular noise was coming up the stairs; but in another moment a woman, shaking a screaming baby in her arms,

“Neither of us,” said I, “but we want to see her, if we may. Are you the woman who takes care of her?”

“I’ve plenty to do minding my own, I can tell ye,” she grumbled, “but I couldn’t abear to see t’ ould lass taken to a ’sylum. They’re queer places some on ’em, as I know. And as to t’ House! there’s a many folks says, ‘Well, if t’ guardians won’t give her no relief, let her go in.’ But she got hold on me one day, and she says, ‘Sally, darling’ (that’s t’ ould lass’s way, is calling ye Darling. It sounds soft, but she is but an old Irish woman, as one may say), ‘if ever,’ she says, ‘you hear tell of their coming to fetch me, God bless ye,’ she says, ‘just give me a look out of your eye, and I’m gone. I’ll be no more trouble to any one,’ she says, ‘and maybe I’ll make it worth your while too.’”

At this point in her narrative the woman looked mysterious, nodded her head, craned over the banisters to see that no one was near, slapped the children and shook up the baby as a sort of mechanical protest against the noise they were making (as to effects they only howled the louder), and drawing nearer to us, spoke in lower tones:

“T’ old lass has money, it’s my belief, though she gives me nowt for her lodging, and she spends nowt on herself. She’s many a time fair clemmed, I’ll assure ye, till I can’t abear to see it, and I give her the bit and sup I might have had myself, for I’m not going to rob t’ children neither for her nor nobody. Ye see it’s her son that’s preying on her mind. He wrote her a letter awhile ago, saying times was bad out yonder, and he was fair heart-broke to be so far away from her, and she’s been queer ever since. She’s wanted for everything herself, slaving and saving to get enough to fetch him home. Where she hides it I know no more nor you, but she wears a sight of old rags, one atop of another, and pockets in all of ‘em for aught I know—hold your din, ye unrewly children!—there’s folks coming. I’ll let ye in. I lock t’ old lass up when I go out, for she might be wandering, and there’s them hereabouts that would reckon nought of putting her out of t’ way and taking what she’s got, if they heard tell on’t.”

At last the door was unlocked, and we went in. And sitting on a low box, dressed as before, even to the old coat and the spotted kerchief over her bonnet, sat Biddy Macartney.

When she lifted her face, I saw that it was much wasted, and that her fine eyes had got a restless uneasy look in them. Suddenly this ceased, and they

“God save ye, squire! Has the old counthry come to this? Is the O’Moore an alien, and all?”

“No, no. I’m the squire’s son,” said Dennis. “But tell me quick, woman, what are you to Barney Barton?”

“Barney is it? Sure he was brother to me, as who knows better than your honour?”

“Did you live with us, too?”

“I did, acushla. In the heighth of ease and comfort, and done nothin’ for it. Wasn’t I the big fool to be marryin’ so early, not knowin’ when I was well off!”

“I know. Barney has told me. A Cork man, your husband, wasn’t he? A lazy, drunken, ill-natured rascal of a fellow.”

“That’s him, your honour!”

“Well, you’re quit of him long since. And, as your son’s in New York, and all I have left of Barney is you ——”

“She doesn’t hear you, Dennis.”

We stayed a long time with her, but she did not really revive. With infinite patience and tenderness, Dennis knelt beside her, and listened to her ramblings about Micky, and Micky’s hardships, and Micky’s longings for home. Once or twice, I think, she was on the point of telling about her savings, but she glanced uneasily round the room and forbore. Dennis gave the other woman some money, and told her to give Biddy a good meal—to have given money to her would have been useless—and he tried hard to convince the old woman that Micky was quite able to leave America if he wished. At last she seemed to take this in, and it gave her, I fear, undue comfort, from the conviction that, if this were so; he would soon be home.

After we left Biddy we went to seek decent lodgings for the night. For Dennis was anxious to see her again in the morning, and of course I stayed with him.

“Had you ever seen her before?” I asked, as we walked.

“Not to remember her. But, Jack, it wasn’t Barney I saw in that first dream. It was Bridget.”

Dennis was full of plans for getting her home with him to Ireland; but when we went back next day, we found a crowd round the archway that led into the court. Prominent in the group was the woman who “cared for” Biddy. Her baby was crying, her children were crying, and she was crying too. And with every moment that passed the crowd grew larger and larger, as few things but bad news can make a crowd grow.

We learnt it very quickly. Biddy had been so much cheered up by our visit, that when the woman went out to buy supper for them, she did not lock the door. When she came back, Biddy was gone. To do her neighbours justice, we could not doubt—considering how they talked then—that they had made inquiries in all the streets and courts around.

“And wherever t’ owld lass can ha’ gone!” sobbed the woman who had been her neighbour in the noblest sense of neighbourhood.

I was beginning to comfort her when Dennis gripped me by the arm:

“I know,” said he. “Come along.”

His face was white, his eyes shone, and he tossed his head so wildly, he looked madder than Biddy had looked; but when he began to run, and roughs in the

The gatekeeper told us that old Biddy, “looking quite herself, only a bit thinner like,” had gone through the evening before, to meet some one who was coming off one of the vessels, as he understood, but he had not noticed her on her return. He had heard her ask some man about a ship from New York.

I wanted to hear more, but Dennis clutched me again and dragged me on.

“I’ll know the wharf when I see it,” said he.

Suddenly he stopped, and pointed. A wharf, but no vessel, only the water sobbing against the stones.

“That’s the wharf,” he gasped. “That’s where he sat and looked down. She’s there!”

He was right. We found her there at ebb of tide, with no sign of turmoil or trouble about her, except the grip that never could be loosened with which she held Micky’s one letter fast in her hand.

“Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The lighthouse-top I see? Is this the hill? Is this the Kirk? Is this mine own countree? We drifted o’er the harbour bar, And I with sobs did pray— O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.” The Ancient Mariner.

When Alister joined us the first evening after we came back from poor Biddy, he was so deeply interested in hearing about her, that he would have gone with us the next morning, if he had not had business on hand. He had a funny sort of remorse for having misjudged her the day she befooled the sentry to get me off. Business connected with Biddy’s death detained Dennis in Liverpool for a day or two, and as I had not given any warning of the date of my return to my people, I willingly stayed with him. My comrades had promised to go home with me before proceeding on their respective ways, but (in answer to

“The Braes of Buie.

“My Dear Jack and Dennis: I am home safe and sound, though not in time for the funeral, which (as partly consequent on the breaking of a tube in one engine, and a trifling damage to the wheels of a second that was attached, if ye understand me, with the purpose of rectifying the deficiencies of the first, the Company being, in my humble judgment, unwisely thrifty in the matter of second-hand boilers) may be regarded as a dispensation of Providence, and was in no degree looked upon by any member of the family as a wanting of respect towards the memory of the deceased. With the sole and single exception of Miss Margaret MacCantywhapple, a far-away cousin by marriage, who, though in good circumstances, and a very virtuous woman, may be said to have seen her best days, and is not what she was in her intellectual judgment, being afflicted with deafness and a species of palsy, besides other infirmities in her faculties. I misdoubt if I was wise in using my endeavours to they aye say so.’ However, at long and last, she was brought to admit that the best of us may misjudge, and as we all have our faults, and hers are for the most part her misfortunes, I tholed her imputations on my veracity in the consideration of her bodily infirmities.

“My dear mother, thank God, is in her usual, and overjoyed to see my face once more. She desires me to present her respects to both of you, with an old woman’s blessing. I’m aware that it will be a matter of kindly satisfaction to you to learn that her old age is secured in carnal comforts through my father’s cousin having left all his worldly gear for her support; that is, he left it to me, which is the same thing. Not without a testimony of respect for my father’s memory, that all the gear of Scotland would be cheap to me by the side of; and a few words as to industry, energy, and the like, which, though far from being deserved on my part, sound—like voices out of the mist upon the mountain side—sweeter and weightier, it may be, than they deserve, when a body hears them, as ye may say, out of the grave.

“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and it’s not for me to complain of the down-break in the engines, seeing that in place of rushing past the coast,

“But I’m taking up your time with havers about

“I am hoping, at your leisure, to hear that ye both reached home, and found all belonging to ye as ye could wish; and I’m thinking that if Dennis wrote in French, I might make it out, for I’ve come by an old French Dictionary that was my father’s. God save the Shamrock! Your affectionate friend,

“Alister Auchterlay.

“I am ill at saying all that I feel, but I’ll never forget.”

Dennis and I tramped from Liverpool. Partly for the walk, and partly because we were nearly penniless. His system, as I told him, seemed to be to empty his pockets first, and to think about how he was going to get along afterwards. However, it must be confessed that the number and the needs of the poor Irish we came across in connection with Biddy’s death and its attendant ceremonies, were enough to be “the ruination” of a far less tender-hearted Paddy than Dennis O’Moore.

And so—a real sailor with a real bundle under my arm—I tramped Home.

He saw everything, and he pretended he saw nothing. He picked up my father’s spectacles, and waltzed with the dogs whilst the old gentleman was blowing his nose. When Martha broke down in hysterics (for which, it was not difficult to see, she would punish herself and us later on, with sulking and sandpaper), Dennis “brought her to” by an affectionate hugging, which, as she afterwards explained, seemed “that natteral” that she never realized its impropriety till it was twenty-four hours too late to remonstrate.

When my dear mother was calmer, and very anxious about our supper and beds, I ascertained from my father that the Woods were from home, and that Jem had gone down to the farm to sit for an hour or so with Charlie; so, pending the preparation of our fatted calf, Dennis and I went to bring both Jem and Charlie back for the night.

It was a dark, moonless night, only tempered by the reflections of furnace fires among the hills. Dennis thought they were northern lights. The lane was cool, and fresh and damp, and full of autumn

I signalled silence to Dennis, and we crept up, as Jem and I had crept years ago to see the pale-faced relation hunting for the miser’s will in the tea-caddy.

In the old arm-chair sat Charlie, propped with cushions. On one side of him Jem leant with elbows on the table, and on the other side sat Master Isaac, spectacles on nose.

The whole table was covered by a Map of the World, and Charlie’s high, eager voice came clearly out into the night.

“Isaac and I have marked every step they’ve gone, Jem, but we don’t think it would be lucky to make the back-mark over the Atlantic till they are quite safe Home.”

Dennis says, in his teasing way, he never believed in my “athletics” till he saw me leap in through that window. He was not far behind.

“Jem!”

“Jack!”

When Jem released me and I looked round, Charlie was resting in Dennis O’Moore’s arms and

“Isaac!” he half laughed, half sobbed: “Dennis is afraid of hurting this poor rickety body of mine. Come here, will you, and pinch me, or pull my hair, that I may be sure it isn’t all a dream!”

THE END.

London & Bungay.

The present Series of Mrs. Ewing’s Works is the only authorized, complete, and uniform Edition published.

It will consist of 18 volumes, Small Crown 8vo, at 2s. 6d. per vol., issued, as far as possible, in chronological order, and these will appear at the rate of two volumes every two months, so that the Series will be completed within 18 months. The device of the cover was specially designed by a Friend of Mrs. Ewing.

The following is a list of the books included in the Series—

MELCHIOR’S DREAM, AND OTHER TALES.

MRS. OVERTHEWAY’S REMEMBRANCES.

OLD-FASHIONED FAIRY TALES.

A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING.

THE BROWNIES, AND OTHER TALES.

SIX TO SIXTEEN.

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE, AND OTHER TALES.

JAN OF THE WINDMILL.

THE PEACE EGG—A CHRISTMAS MUMMING PLAY—HINTS FOR PRIVATE THEATRICALS, &c.

A GREAT EMERGENCY, AND OTHER TALES.

BROTHERS OF PITY, AND OTHER TALES OF BEASTS AND MEN.

WE AND THE WORLD, Part I.

WE AND THE WORLD, Part II.

JACKANAPES—DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOTE—THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE.

MARY’S MEADOW, AND OTHER TALES OF FIELDS AND FLOWERS.

MISCELLANEA, including The Mystery of the Bloody Hand—Wonder Stories—Tales of the Khoja, and other translations.

JULIANA HORATIA EWING AND HER BOOKS, with a selection from Mrs. Ewing’s Letters.

S.P.C.K., NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, LONDON, W.C.