til that refrain of all true
penitence lulled him to sleep.

'Alick is found! My boy is alive!' The captain had been able to utter
no more as he pushed the crumpled wisp of a letter into a thin hand
eagerly outstretched to receive it. The tears were running unheeded
down the old man's cheeks.

'Oh, father!' There was a glad cry. 'God is good indeed! He has
heard our prayers.'

It was Theo--or was it Theo's ghost?--who sat by the open window
drinking in the sea breezes she was still too weak to go out of doors
and meet. Yes, Theo was, day by day, coming back to her old sweet
self, after a long spell of illness. There was only weakness left to
fight--weakness and anxiety about Alick. As long as possible the fact
of Alick having run away from home was kept from the prostrate girl.
But in the end it abruptly leaked out, and nearly pushed her back
through the gates of death.

Every means that the captain knew of had been set in motion to find the
pair of runaways. But the searchers were checkmated at the outset by
failing to find the boys at the Docks. The police in the end convinced
themselves and the captain that the pair had stolen on board some
foreign vessel on the eve of its departure, and, as stowaways, were
already far off on the deep.

But which of the many hundreds of ships that had set sail since might
the boys possibly be aboard? Again and again had the half-distracted
father asked himself the maddening question as he paced the busy Docks.
He would return then to Northbourne, where his other beloved child lay
in jeopardy of her young life. Through the anxious night-watches by
her bed, the old sailor pictured his boy on board some barque ploughing
the seas, the stormy winds roaring through the rigging, the decks wet
and slippery, the rough sailors cuffing and jostling the unwelcome
intruders who had stolen their passages.

None knew better than the captain what the boys who had hidden
themselves in some dark corner of an outward-bound vessel would be
called upon to endure, when discovered; none knew better than he the
hourly dangers to which they would be exposed in the perils of the
deep--the risks of foundering, of collision, of tempests.

As the days wore on, and no word came of the runaways, the old sailor's
heart sank to the lowest depths.

'Father, we must trust him to God; it's all we can do,' a low, weak
voice whispered; and the old man took heart again. He would trust his
boy to