ch, alas! too
often prevents Christians from taking a bold stand on the Lord's side.

The young sailor had, no doubt, had severe inward conflicts, which were
known only to God and himself, but he had been delivered and
strengthened, for he was not ashamed of Christ in the presence of his
old comrades, and he sought by all the means in his power to draw them
to the same blessed Saviour.

"Well, good-bye, Jim," said Mr Welton, senior, as his son moved towards
the gangway, when the boat came alongside, "all I've got to say to 'ee,
lad, is, that you're on dangerous ground, and you have no right to shove
yourself in the way of temptation."

"But I don't _shove_ myself, father; I think I am led in that way. I
may be wrong, perhaps, but such is my belief."

"You'll not forget that message to my mother," whispered a
sickly-looking seaman, whose strong-boned frame appeared to be somewhat
attenuated by disease.

"I'll not forget, Rainer. It's likely that we shall be in Yarmouth in a
couple of days, and you may depend upon my looking up the old woman as
soon after I get ashore as possible."

"Hallo! hi!" shouted a voice from below, "wot's all the hurry?" cried
Dick Moy, stumbling hastily up on deck while in the act of closing a
letter which bore evidence of having been completed under difficulties,
for its form was irregular, and its back was blotted. "Here you are,
putt that in the post at Yarmouth, will 'ee, like a good fellow?"

"Why, you've forgotten the address," exclaimed Jim Welton in affected
surprise.

"No, I 'aven't. There it is hall right on the back."

"What, that blot?"

"Ay, that's wot stands for Mrs Moy," said Dick, with a good-natured
smile.

"Sure now," observed Jerry MacGowl, looking earnestly at the letter, "it
do seem to me, for all the world, as if a cat had drawed his tail across
it after stumblin' over a ink-bottle."

"Don't Mrs Moy live in Ramsgate?" inquired Jim Welton.

"Of course she do," replied Dick.

"But I'm not going there; I'm goin' to Yarmouth," said Jim.

"Wot then?" retorted Dick, "d'ee suppose the clerk o' the post-office at
Yarmouth ain't as well able to read as the one at Ramsgate, even though
the writin' _do_ be done with a cat's tail? Go along with 'ee."

Thus dismissed, Jim descended the side and was quickly on board the
sloop Nora to which he belonged.

On the deck of the little craft he was received gruffly by a man of
powerful frame and stern aspect, but whose