raise the siege.

"I wish that I had been there!" exclaimed Harry. "Captain Leslie says
we ought to be afloat again, and it's right, I know, though home is very
pleasant. We are sure, if we go, to obtain our promotion before long,
and once lieutenants, if we have luck, we shall soon win our next step;
till I get that, I feel too sure that I shall have no chance of gaining
the object nearest my heart."

"What is that, Harry?" I asked.

"Perhaps I ought to have told you before, father; but the secret was not
mine alone," was the answer.

Harry then told me what I suspected long ago, that he had set his heart
on marrying Miss Fanny Leslie.

"I hope you have not told her so, my boy," I said; "the captain would
not approve of it."

"Yes, father, I have though," he answered; "and she has promised to
marry me if her parents will allow her."

"I am very sorry to hear this, for one thing, Harry," I said; "I fear it
will cause you and her much disappointment and sorrow. The captain is
very kind; he wishes you well, but he is proud of his family; and he
will not allow his daughter to marry a man about whose birth he knows
nothing, and who has no fortune. He will also be vexed to find that his
daughter has engaged herself without first consulting him and her
mother."

"But we have known each other from childhood, and he always encouraged
me to come to the house," pleaded Harry; "and so Fanny thinks that he
will not object to me."

"It's my belief he never thought such a thing possible," I observed; "I
daresay he will blame himself when he finds it out, but that won't make
him excuse you. I wish you would tell Miss Fanny what I say. The best
thing you can now do is to set each other free; and if she remains
unmarried, and you obtain your promotion and discover that you are of a
family to which her father would not object, you can then come forward
openly and claim her."

This, I am sure, was good advice.

"But, father, I cannot say this to Fanny; she would think me
hard-hearted and that I did not really love her," said Harry.

"If she trusts you, and is a sensible girl, she will see that you are
acting rightly," I answered. "Do what is right, and trust that all will
come well in the end. That is a sound maxim, depend on it."

Harry at last replied that he would think over what I had said.

The next day he told me that he had spoken to Miss Fanny, who, though it
made her very unhappy, had at last acknowledg