paid no attention to the ravings of the old
fisherman. They raised the broken door and leaned it against the wall,
and moved toward the corner from whence the voice proceeded. There, upon
a miserable pallet, lay a gaunt and crippled form, partly concealed by a
ragged blanket which was drawn over his head. Captain Green gently
unclasped the withered fingers that were holding fast to it, and removed
the blanket, revealing first a shock of gray, uncombed hair, and next a
bronzed and weather-beaten face, on which the signs of a reckless and
dissolute life were plainly visible.

"Go away, I tell you," cried the fisherman, striving to draw the blanket
over his head again. "Who asked you to come here? I know who you are,
and I don't want any thing to do with you--I don't want to see you."

Something in the features, or the voice, must have struck Captain Green
as being familiar, for he bent lower over the prostrate form, and when
he straightened up, the face he turned toward his companions expressed
the most intense amazement.

"IT IS TOM NEWCOMBE!" said he.

"Ay, it is Tom Newcombe--or, rather, all there is left of him--starving
to death here in his native village, with no one, among all those who
once pretended to be his friends, to lend him a helping hand. You can't
assist me in my distress, but you can come here to torment me with your
presence--to show me what _you_ are, and what _I might have been_. If I
had only listened to the advice so often offered me, I might have been
the equal of any of you," added the sailor, in a repentant frame of
mind. "But it's too late now. Why can't you go away and let me alone?
I'll never trouble you, and I don't want you to bother me."

He sank back upon the bed exhausted, and turned his face to the wall,
while his visitors gazed down at him in silence. Who could have told
that there ever would have existed so great a difference between these
four men, who were once boys together? Three of them were beloved and
respected by all who knew them, held positions of honor and trust, were
cheerful, happy, and contented, and, better than all, could look back
upon lives well spent; the other was a mere wreck of humanity, a feeble
old man, when he ought to have been in his prime, living in that
miserable hovel, friendless and alone, destitute of all comforts,
dissatisfied with himself and every body, and reaping at last the reward
of a dissipated, wasted existence. His bad habits had grown and