aracter of the poor girl, who
reclined by the side of the bed, so pale and still that, but for the
slight twitching movement of her clasped hands, one might have supposed
she had already passed from the scene of her woe. Even the
old-fashioned timepiece that hung upon a nail in the wall seemed to be
smitten with the pervading spell, for its pendulum was motionless, and
its feeble pulse had ceased to tick.

A soft tap at the door broke the deathlike silence. Nora looked up but
did not answer, as it slowly opened, and a man entered. On seeing who
it was, she uttered a low wail, and buried her face in the bed-clothes.
Without speaking, or moving from her position, she held out her hand to
Jim Welton, who advanced with a quick but quiet step, and, going down on
his knees beside her, took the little hand in both of his. The attitude
and the silence were suggestive. Without having intended it the young
sailor began to pray, and in a few short broken sentences poured out his
soul before God.

A flood of tears came to Nora's relief. After a few minutes she looked
up.

"Oh! thank you, thank you, Jim. I believe that in the selfishness of my
grief I had forgotten God; but oh! I feel as if my heart was crushed
beyond the power of recovery. _She_ is gone" (glancing at the empty
bed), "and _he_ is gone--gone--_for ever_."

Jim wished to comfort her, and tried to speak, but his voice was choked.
He could only draw her to him, and laying her head on his breast,
smooth her fair soft hair with his hard but gentle hand.

"Not gone for ever, dearest," he said at length with a great effort.
"It is indeed along long time, but--"

He could not go further, for it seemed to him like mockery to suggest by
way of comfort that fourteen years would come to an end.

For some minutes the silence was broken only by an occasional sob from
poor Nora.

"Oh! he was so different _once_," she said, raising herself and looking
at her lover with tearful, earnest eyes; "you have seen him at his
worst, Jim. There was a time,--before he took to--"

She stopped abruptly, as if unable to find words, and pointed, with a
fierce expression, that seemed strange and awful on her gentle face, to
the fragments of the broken bottle on the hearth. Jim nodded. She saw
that he understood, and went on in her own calm voice:--

"There was a time when he was kind and gentle and loving; when he had no
drunken companions, and no mysterious goings to sea; w