t then, I tramped it down to Falmouth and shipped aboard
the _Marlborough_, Post Office Packet, for Lisbon."

"And you've been dodging at sea ever since," said I severely.

"If you'd only seen that boy!" protested Mr. Jope.

"I'll call with you and see him as soon as ever we reach Plymouth," I
said; "but you passed your word, and your word you must keep."

"You're sure 'twill be safe for you at Plymouth?" he asked, and (as I
thought) a trifle mischievously. "How about that Jew?"

"Oh, that's all cleared up!"

He sighed. "Some folks has luck. To be sure, he may be dead," he
added, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"The Jew?"

"No, the boy."

I could hold out no hope of this, and he consoled himself with
anticipating the time we would spend together at Symonds's. "For if
you're invalided home, they'll discharge you on leave as soon as we
reach port."

"Unless they keep me in hospital," said I.

"Then you'll have to make a cure of it on the voyage."

"I feel like that, already. But the mischief is I've no home to go
to."

"There's Symonds's."

"I might give that as an address, to be sure."

"Damme!" cried Ben, as a bright thought struck him, "why couldn't I
adopt you?"

"The lady might find that an inducement," said I modestly.

"I wasn't exactly seeing it in that light," he confessed. "But, with
a boy apiece, she and I might start fair. You could punch his head,
brother like."

The _Cumberland_ weighed anchor on the 2nd of May, and dropped it
again under Staddon Heights on the 29th of that month. To my
delight, the garrison surgeon at Plymouth pronounced me fit to
travel: my foot only needed rest, he said; and he asked me where my
home lay.

I had anticipated this, and answered that a letter addressed to me
under care Miss Amelia Plinlimmon, at the Genevan Foundling Hospital,
would certainly find me. And so I was granted two months' leave of
absence to recover from my wound.

"But you don't mean to tell me," said Mr. Jope as we strolled down
Union Street together, "that you haven't a home or relations in this
world?"

"Neither one nor the other," said I; "but I have picked up a few
friends."

As he drew westward I noticed that he sensibly retarded his pace: but
he had forsworn visiting Symonds's until, as he put it, we knew the
worst; and I marched him relentlessly up to the door of doom with its
immaculate brass knocker. And when, facing it, he shut his eyes, I
put out a hand a