Ruth was almost running by this time, and the captain, being still far
from strong, found it difficult to keep up with her.

"This way, down here," she cried, turning a corner.

"What, _this_ way?" exclaimed the captain in amazement.

"Yes, why not?" said Ruth, reflecting some of his surprise as she looked
up in his face.

"Why--why, because this is the very Row I wanted to bring you to!"

"That _is_ strange--but--but never mind just now; you'll explain
afterwards. Come along."

Poor Ruth was too much excited to attend to any other business but that
on which her heart was set just then; and fear lest her latest castle
should prove to have no foundations and should fall like so many others
in ruins at her feet, caused her to tremble.

"Here is the door," she said at last, coming to a sudden halt before
widow Bright's dwelling, and pressing both hands on her palpitating
heart to keep it still.

"Wonders will never cease!" exclaimed the captain. "This is the very
door to which I intended to bring _you_."

Ruth turned her large blue eyes on her friend with a look that made them
larger and, if possible, bluer than ever. She suddenly began to feel as
deep an interest in the captain's business as in her own.

"_This_ door?" she said, pointing to it emphatically.

"Yes, _that_ door. Widow Bright lives there, don't she?"

"Yes--oh! yes," said Ruth, squeezing her heart tighter.

"Well, I've come here to search for a long-lost sister."

"Oh!" gasped Ruth.

But she got no time to gasp anything more, for the impatient captain had
pushed the door open without knocking, and stood in the middle of the
widow's kitchen.

Mrs Bright was up to the elbows in soap-suds at the moment, busy with
some of the absent Billy's garments. Beside her sat Mrs Joe Davidson,
endeavouring to remove, with butter, a quantity of tar with which the
"blessed babby" had recently besmeared herself.

They all looked up at the visitors, but all remained speechless, as if
suddenly paralysed, for the expression on our big captain's face was
wonderful, as well as indescribable. Mrs Bright opened her eyes to
their widest, also her mouth, and dropped the Billy-garments. Mrs
Davidson's buttery hands became motionless; so did the "babby's" tarry
visage. For three seconds this lasted. Then the captain said, in the
deepest bass notes he ever reached--

"Sister Nellie!"

A wild scream from Mrs Bright was the reply, as she sprang at Captain
B