latest comer. No weeds, no dead rose-bushes, no vampire
ivy now; but an orderly garden, new planted and watered, and in the
midst a small mound heaped with fresh-cut flowers. She had visited the
child daily while he lived at Mrs Kelsey's; now she almost daily
visited his grave.

They dropped on their knees beside it, close as bride and bridegroom on
altar steps, as father and mother at the firstborn's cradle. The dusk
was melting into moonlight; they could not see each other's faces. When
his big frame heaved with heavy sobs, she laid a timid hand--her
beautiful hand--on his shoulder; and when he felt that sympathetic
woman's touch, he turned suddenly and kissed her. Afterwards he did not
remember that he had done it.

She seemed to cling to him when, next morning, the time came for him to
go.

"You will come again?" she implored him, in a trembling whisper. "You
will come here when you return next time?"

"Oh, surely," he replied, whispering too, and to the full as deeply
moved. But when he got away it was to other lands that he turned his
eyes, in the search for new interests to occupy his lonely life. With
Lily and the baby dead, and Deborah Pennycuick given to another man,
Australia had no more hold on him. His first letter to Redford notified
that he had changed into another line, and that the name of his new
ship was the DOVEDALE. She traded to the West Indies.

He forgot to write again when, not very long afterwards, he went back
to his old line, at the invitation of the Company, as captain of the
ship on which he had served as mate.

CHAPTER IX.

"'Dovedale'--DOVEDALE--hullo!" Mr Pennycuick broke the silence of his
newspaper reading. "Why, isn't that--Well, upon my soul! it does seem
as if some folks were born unlucky. Here's that poor young
fellow--first he loses a charming wife, before he's been married any
time, and then the finest child going, and now here he's gone himself,
before his prime, with no end of a career before him--"

"Who?" cried Deb from the tea-table, where she was helping herself to a
hot cake.

"Young Carey--our Carey; oh, it's him all right, worse luck! His ship's
been wrecked, and only two A.B.s saved to tell the tale. Look here."

He passed the newspaper, pressed under his broad thumb.

Deb stood to read the indicated item, while her father watched her
face. Neither of them noticed Mary's peculiar appearance, nor marked
her departure from the room.

"We must inqui