in them, I gained the
sea-coast; I gazed upon the ocean, with its majestic billows rolling up
from the far-off east. They seemed to me like mighty monuments raised
to the memory of those who slept beneath. For many years I had lived on
that wild sea waste, when I was seized and carried to a prison. I
demanded to know my crime. I heard myself branded as a pauper lunatic,
and was placed on board a ship to be returned to my native land. Sad,
sad was my heart. I had many companions in my misery--helpless beings
whom the strong new world would not receive. We were placed on shore to
starve, or live as best we could. I wandered on towards the spot where
long, long years before, I had lived a happy maiden. No one knew me; I
was branded as a witch, and fled away. Should I go to the relatives of
my husband? Thomas had spoken of them as kind and charitable. I
reached the village; every one looked at me with suspicion as a vagrant.
Well they might, for a vagrant I was, poor, wretched, and despised. I
had been there in my happy days with Thomas; but the place itself looked
strange. I inquired for his father, Farmer Holman. `Dead many a year
ago; all the rest gone away; never held up his head since his son went
off with that jade who murdered her mistress.' Such was the answer I
received. The words fell like molten lead upon my brain. I fled away.
I wandered on, not knowing whither I was going, till I reached these
sheltering walls on the mountain-side."
Tom had been greatly agitated on hearing the name of Holman. Frank and
Anna had exchanged surprised glances with each other.
"Dame, do you remember the name of Jack Johnson on board the ship which
foundered with so many on board?" asked Tom.
"Ay, that I do. He was one who took a great fancy to my precious boy,"
answered Moggy, gazing earnestly at Tom.
"It is strange, mother, but such was the name of a kind seaman who for
many years acted as a second father to me; and still stranger, that he
always called me Tom Holman," exclaimed Tom, as he sat himself down on
the stool at her feet, and drawing a tin case from his pocket, took from
it a variety of small articles, which he placed in her lap.
She gazed at them with a fixed, earnest look for some moments, and then,
stretching out her arms, she exclaimed, "Come to me, my son, my boy--
long lost, now found! I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me out of my
deep distress. You bear your father's name, you have
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