Amen."

After that they shook hands tenderly with the widow and Billy, and went
out silently from the house of mourning.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE CAPTAIN'S APPETITE RESTORED, AND RUTH IN A NEW LIGHT.

Captain Bream reclined one day on a sofa in the sitting-room of the
house where he had first made the acquaintance of the Miss Seawards.
Both ladies were seated by his side, the one working worsted cuffs and
the other comforters, and both found the utmost difficulty in repressing
tears when they looked at their kind nautical friend, for a great change
had come over him since we last saw him.

We will not venture to state what was the illness that had laid the
captain, as he himself expressed it on his beam-ends, but whatever it
might have been, it had reduced him to a mere shadow. His once round
cheeks were hollow; his eyes were so sunken that they appeared to have
retired into the interior of his head, out of which, as out of two deep
caverns, they gleamed solemnly. His voice, having been originally
pitched so low that it could not well get lower, had become reduced to
the sound of a big drum muffled; it had also a faint resemblance to a
bassoon with a bad cold. His beard and moustache, having been allowed
to grow, bore a striking likeness to a worn-out clothes-brush, and his
garments appeared to hang upon a living skeleton of large proportions.

It is right however, to add that this was the worst that could be said
of him. The spirit within was as cheery and loving and tender as ever
it had been--indeed more so--and the only wonder was that it did not
break a hole in the once tough but now thin shell of its prison-house,
and soar upwards to its native regions in the sky!

"You must _not_ work so hard at these cuffs, Miss Jessie," he said, with
a pleasant though languid smile. "If you do I'll reduce my board."

"But that would only render it necessary that I should work harder,"
returned Jessie, without checking the pace of the needles.

"It is hard," resumed the captain, "that I should be disobeyed at every
turn now that I'm on my beam-ends, with little more strength in me than
a new-born kitten. But never mind, I'm beginnin' to feel stronger, and
I'll pay you off, my dear, when I'm able to move about."

"Do you really feel a little stronger?" asked Kate, who, although more
lively--even mischievous in a small way--than her sister, had been more
deeply affected by the captain's long illness, and cou