empty-handed as we went. So, as I
wouldn't come home without the necessary money, I just slips a short
line into the post to let Rhoda know that Hugh Anwyl was alive, and to
beg her to be patient. Then, indeed, I joined a second expedition,
which was fortunate. We brought back with us a fine cargo of sealskins,
besides whalebone; and when I drew my share, it amounted, all told, to
nigh upon two hundred pounds, together with some furs, and a few
curiosities.

I ran down straight from Aberdeen, travelling night and day by the
railway, just such another autumn night as the one when I started. I
rolled, unsteady like, into Glanwern village, and the first soul I meets
was Gwen Thomas. My stars! you should have heard her give tongue. If
I'd been Evan Dhu himself in the guise of a seafaring man, she couldn't
have looked more terrified.

"Why, Gwen, lass!" cried I, "you ain't never afeard of Hugh Anwyl?"

She was afeard, though; and she'd good cause, too.

"How's Rhoda?" asks I. I ought to hae mentioned my father, but my mind
ran, like a ship in a whirlpool, to one centre.

"Oh," says Gwen, turning away her head, "she's still ill!"

"What d'ye mean?" I sings out, clutching her arm tight.

"Don't!" says she. "You sailors are so rough, indeed."

"You speak the truth, then!" cries I; for I guessed from her look and
the queer colour in her darned figurehead, that something was tarnation
wrong with my Rhoda.

She looks at me as steady as a gunner taking aim.

"Hugh," she says, "you'll have to hear what will hurt you sooner or
later. Rhoda is married to David!"

I didn't speak. Neither did a tear escape my eye. But I sat down on a
stone by the roadside, and I felt as if I'd been struck by a flash of
lightning.

Gwen went on talking; and at last, when she saw what was up, she ran and
fetched my father, and the old lubber hoisted me somehow indoors, and
shoved me into a hammock. I rather think I was what ye may call mad.

How long my mind remained so affected I can't rightly judge. My first
recollection is of seeing a pale face sitting by my side, and I heard a
sound which brought me to.

It was Rhoda. Although she'd been forced into a marriage with that
lubber David, she'd not forgotten me; and she'd come to tell me all.
Yes, indeed. And what's more, she'd come none to soon; for if Hugh
Anwyl was somewhere in the latitude of lunacy, Rhoda was in the
longitude of decline. She was dying! Yes, indeed!