. This is
peace--but go."

Ethel found Mary and Harry interlaced into one moving figure, and Harry
greedily asking for his father and Norman, as if famishing for the sight
of them. He wanted to set out to seek the former in the town, but his
movements were too uncertain, and the girls clung to the newly-found,
as if they could not trust him away from them. They wandered about,
speaking, all three at random, without power of attending to the
answers. It was enough to see him, and touch him; they could not yet
care where he had been.

Dr. May was in the midst of them ere they were aware. One look, and he
flung his arms round his son, but, suddenly letting him go, he burst
away, and banged his study door. Harry would have followed.

"No, don't," said Ethel; then, seeing him disappointed, she came nearer,
and murmured, "'He entered into his chamber and--'"

Harry silenced her with another embrace, but their father was with them
again, to verify that he had really seen his boy, and ask, alas! whether
Alan were with Margaret. The brief sad answer sent him to see how it was
with her. She would not let him stay; she said it was infinite comfort,
and joy was coming, but she would rather be still, and not come down
till evening.

Perhaps others would fain have been still, could they have borne an
instant's deprivation of the sight of their dear sailor, while greetings
came thickly on him. The children burst in, having heard a report in the
town, and Dr. Spencer waited at the door for the confirmation; but when
Ethel would have flown out to him, he waved his hand, shut the door, and
hurried away, as if a word to her would have been an intrusion.

The brothers had been summoned by a headlong apparition of Will Adams in
Cocksmoor school, shouting that Master Harry was come home; and Norman's
long legs out-speeding Richard, had brought him back, flushed, and too
happy for one word, while, "Well, Harry," was Richard's utmost, and his
care for Margaret seemed to overpower everything else, as he went up,
and was not so soon sent away.

Words were few downstairs. Blanche and Aubrey agreed that they
thought people would have been much happier, but, in fact, the joy was
oppressive from very newness. Ethel roamed about, she could not sit
still without feeling giddy, in the strangeness of the revulsion. Her
father sat, as if a word would break the blest illusion; and Harry
stood before each of them in turn, as if about to speak, but