long time I've been being found
again," said Larry; "and how we've both come to life again is more than
I can tell."

"Oh, I never forgot you, and wouldn't listen to what any other man had
to say to me," said Mrs Harrigan.

"Nor I, faith, what the girls said to me," returned Larry. "But for the
matter of that, my timber toe wasn't much to their liking."

"I see, Larry, you've lost your leg since I lost you, and it was that
puzzled me, or I should have known you at once--that I should," observed
Mrs Harrigan, giving him an affectionate kiss on his rough cheek.

They did not mind me at all, and went on talking away as if I was not in
the room, which was very amusing.

Larry afterwards confessed to me that he should not have recognised his
wife, for when he went to sea and left her for the last time, she was a
slim, pretty young woman; and though she was certainly not uncomely, no
one could accuse her of not having flesh enough. Larry, as many another
sailor has done, had married at the end of a very short courtship, his
wife, then a nursery-maid in an officer's family at Portsmouth; and a
few weeks afterwards he had been pressed and sent out to the East
Indies. While there, he had been drafted into another ship, and the
ship in which he had left home had been lost with all hands. Of this
event his wife became acquainted, and having come from an inland county,
and not knowing how to gain further information about him, she had
returned to her parents in the country. They died, and she went again
into service.

Meantime, Larry, having lost his leg, came home, and notwithstanding all
his inquiries, he could gain no tidings of her. At last he came to the
conclusion that she must have married again, probably another sailor,
and gone away with him--no uncommon occurrence in those days; so he
philosophically determined to think no more about her, but to return to
the land of his birth to end his days.

She had gone through the usual vicissitudes of an unprotected female,
and at last returned to Portsmouth with a family in whose service she
acted as curse. Here, having saved up a little money, she determined to
settle as a lodging-house keeper, and she had taken the house in which
we found her.

This event, caused me very great satisfaction, for it had occurred to me
that Larry would find himself very forlorn going back to Ireland without
me to look after, and no one to care about; and now, instead, he would
have