in' lad once, though I
don't look like it now. When poor Mary was murdered I was nineteen. I
won't tell ye how I loved that dear girl. Ye couldn't understand me.
When she was murdered by that"--(he paused abruptly for a moment, and
then resumed)--"when she was murdered, I thought I should have gone mad.
I _was_ mad, I believe, for a time; but when I came back here to stay,
after wanderin' in foreign parts for many years, I took to comin' to the
grave at nights. At first I got no good. I thought my heart would
burst altogether, but at last the Lord sent peace into my soul. I began
to think of her as an angel in heaven, and now the sweetest hours of my
life are spent on this grave. Poor Mary! She was gentle and kind,
especially to the poor and the afflicted. She took a great interest in
the ways and means we had for savin' people from wrecks, and used often
to say it was a pity they couldn't get a boat made that would neither
upset nor sink in a storm. She had read o' some such contrivance
somewhere, for she was a great reader. Ever since that time I've bin
trying, in my poor way, to make something o' the sort, but I've not
managed it yet. I like to think she would have been pleased to see me
at it."

Old Jeph stopped at this point, and shook his head slowly. Then he
continued--

"I find that as long as I keep near this grave my love for Mary can't
die, and I don't want it to. But that's why I think you're right to go
abroad. It won't do for a man like you to go moping through life as I
have done. Mayhap there's some truth in the sayin', Out o' sight out o'
mind."

"Ah's me!" said Bax; "isn't it likely that there may be some truth too
in the words o' the old song, `Absence makes the heart grow fonder.'
But you're right, Jeph, it wouldn't do for _me_ to go moping through
life as long as there's work to do. Besides, old boy, there's plenty of
_this_ sort o' thing to be done; and I'll do it better now that I don't
have anybody in particular to live for."

Bax said this with reckless gaiety, and touched the medal awarded to him
by the Lifeboat Institution, which still hung on his breast where it had
been fastened that evening by Lucy Burton.

The two friends rose and returned together to Jeph's cottage, where Bax
meant to remain but a few minutes, to leave sundry messages to various
friends. He was shaking hands with the old man and bidding him
farewell, when the door was burst open and Tommy Bogey rus