ers soon after his return to England.
I cannot say that I was greatly surprised, for I had known a few, and
had heard of many, men who had exchanged the navy for the Church. It
struck me, however, that Galt Roscoe appeared to view the matter from
a stand-point not professional; the more so, that he expressed his
determination to go to the newest part of a new country, to do the
pioneer work of the Church. I asked him where he was going, and he said
to the Rocky Mountains of Canada. I told him that my destination was
Canada also. He warmly expressed the hope that we should see something
of each other there. This friendship of ours may seem to have been
hastily hatched, but it must be remembered that the sea is a great
breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty
years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were
before, or else estrange them.
It was on this evening that, in a lull of the conversation, I casually
asked him when he had known Mrs. Falchion. His face was inscrutable, but
he said somewhat hurriedly, "In the South Sea Islands," and then changed
the subject. So, there was some mystery again? Was this woman never to
be dissociated from enigma? In those days I never could think of her
save in connection with some fatal incident in which she was scathless,
and some one else suffered.
It may have been fancy, but I thought that, during the first day or
two after leaving Aden, Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion were very little
together. Then the impression grew that this was his doing, and again
that she waited with confident patience for the time when he would seek
her--because he could not help himself. Often when other men were paying
her devoted court I caught her eyes turned in his direction, and I
thought I read in her smile a consciousness of power. And it so was.
Very soon he was at her side. But I also noticed that he began to look
worn, that his conversation with me lagged. I think that at this time
I was so much occupied with tracing personal appearances to personal
influences that I lost to some degree the physician's practical
keenness. My eyes were to be opened. He appeared to be suffering, and
she seemed to unbend to him more than she ever unbent to me, or any one
else on board. Hungerford, seeing this, said to me one day in his blunt
way: "Marmion, old Ulysses knew what he was about when he tied himself
to the mast."
But the routine of the ship went on as
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