amrock! 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.

Dennis had been a good comrade out in the world; but that was a trifle
to the tact and sympathy he displayed when my mother and father and I
were making fools of ourselves in each other's arms.

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 scents of
fading leaves, and toadstools, and Herb Robert and late Meadow Sweet.
And as we crossed the grass under the walnut-trees, I saw that the old
school-room window was open to the evening air, and lighted from within.

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