e to her bedroom. Our hero happened to catch sight of
her face, and it made a very powerful impression on him--an impression
which was greatly deepened afterwards on hearing of her death.

In the reception-room he found Armstrong still in earnest conversation
with his wife.

"Hallo, Armstrong! still here? Have you been sitting there since I left
you?" he asked, with a smile and look of surprise.

"Oh no!" answered his friend; "not all the time. We have been out
walking about town, and we have had dinner here--an excellent feed, let
me tell you, and cheap too. But where did you run off to?"

"Sit down and I'll tell you," said Miles.

Thereupon he related all about his day's experiences. When he had
finished, Armstrong told him that his own prospect of testing the merits
of a troop-ship were pretty fair, as he was ordered for inspection on
the following day.

"So you see," continued the young soldier, "if you are accepted--as you
are sure to be--you and I will go out together in the same vessel."

"I'm glad to hear that, anyhow," returned Miles.

"And _I_ am very glad too," said little Emily, with a beaming smile,
"for Willie has told me about you, Mr Miles; and how you first met and
took a fancy to each other; and it _will_ be so nice to think that
there's somebody to care about my Willie when he is far away from me."

The little woman blushed and half-laughed, and nearly cried as she said
this, for she felt that it was rather a bold thing to say to a stranger,
and yet she had such a strong desire to mitigate her husband's
desolation when absent from her that she forcibly overcame her modesty.
"And I want you to do me a favour, Mr Miles," she added.

"I'll do it with pleasure," returned our gallant hero.

"I want you to call him Willie," said the little woman, blushing and
looking down.

"Certainly I will--if your husband permits me."

"You see," she continued, "I want him to keep familiar with the name
I've been used to call him--for comrades will call him Armstrong, I
suppose, and--"

"Oh! Emmy," interrupted the soldier reproachfully, "do you think I
require to be _kept in remembrance_ of that name? Won't your voice,
repeating it, haunt me day and night till the happy day when I meet you
again on the Portsmouth jetty, or may-hap in this very room?"

Miles thought, when he heard this speech, of the hoped-for meeting
between poor Mrs Martin and her Fred; and a feeling of profound sadness
crept ov