is a strange contradiction in her end. The nurse who
was with her says that she moaned for him, like a child, through all
those dreary days; and yet when he came into the room she looked at
him, turned her face to the wall, and would not speak. It seemed almost
as if she had held herself within a bond she loathed, and as if death
had really freed her.

Francis returned to Boston on his slow-sailing boat. They were coming
up the harbor in the flush of twilight, and the State-house dome stood
like a golden beehive against the sky. He had kept very much to
himself, said one of the passengers who was strongly drawn to him, and
now he stood by the rail, not looking forward with the seeking glance
of those whose voyage is done, but musingly into the sea. A little
sailboat had been keeping alongside. Two men were in it, and they were
plainly drunk. They had a little rough dog, and they were teasing him.
The passengers looked on with indignant protest. One or two called out;
but the men swore back and bullied him the more. Their last pleasantry
was to hold him over the side with a feint of dropping him; and
suddenly, in an access of cruelty, they called out that he should swim
for it. And then they dropped him. Francis Hume had not followed the
entire occurrence; but the passenger who told it happened to glance at
him at the moment when the dog was thrown overboard. That he saw. She
says he glowed at once with pure anger. His face lighted and flamed;
and two seconds after the dog went down, Francis Hume sprang after him.
There was an outcry on the instant. A boat was lowered, but some
strange clumsiness of execution seemed to overshadow the whole thing;
so that Hume had to keep himself afloat for what seemed a long time. In
reality, she supposes, it was minutes. That was nothing. Miles of
swimming were nothing to a man of his training; but when the boat
reached him, he threw the dog into it and himself slipped away. That
was all. The event is confused in the minds of everybody present, and
no one can wholly account for it. It seemed fatality. He simply went
down, and his body was not recovered. The men in the sailboat, shocked
into soberness, put about, and left the steamer in all possible haste;
and the passenger who told me the story dried the little dog in her
shawl and promised him a home. But of this thing every one is
convinced. Francis Hume must have gone willingly to his death, but he
did not choose it. The sailors of t