seemed, at
last, as if poor Mrs Campbell had found a climate that suited her, and
that put new life and strength into her failing, fragile form. For
those happy and treacherous nights, spent in looking over the bay at
Malta for her husband's home-coming, had sown the seeds of a
consumption, that each month now seemed to be increasing its wasting,
rapid strides.

Yet at Wilton she seemed revived and better than she had been for long;
and Alan grew more cheerful and hopeful that, if God pleased, her life,
with care and watching, might be spared. So he took rooms at the farm
for a length of time; sent his boy, now grown into a young image of his
stout father, to a grammar-school in the village, and determined that,
as the place agreed with her so well, Minnie should make it her home,
even when he went to sea.

And once more their happiness lost the cloud of doubt and anxiety that
for long had been hanging over it. But the dream was soon to be snapt.

One evening Alan came home to find his wife much worse than she had
ever been. He learnt the cause. She had been sitting with a sick
person, and from the hot, sickroom had passed out into the damp evening
air. And this was the result.

The village-doctor was sent for at once; and when, on the next morning,
Alan anxiously, tremblingly, asked him the candid truth, it was with an
open letter in his hand, with which his fingers nervously played. It
was marked "On Her Majesty's Service." He must hold himself in
readiness to sail within a fortnight. And the doctor's answer was a
fearful crowning to this unexpected tidings.

"She may linger on for a month," he said, "six weeks at most. You will
have to bid her good-bye for ever when you go. No skill can make her
live till you come home."

Alan never uttered a word, but his face was very pale, and a great
shudder passed over his frame.

"It is very, very sad for you," said the little doctor, "I pity you
from my heart." And then he jolted away down the lane in his shaky
trap, drawn by his broken-winded pony.

And Alan turned into the farm, and was soon by his wife's side.

So the fortnight passed, and the good-bye was said; and this is why
that good-bye was so unutterably sad; and this is all that Harry could
not understand.

CHAPTER III.

SAD INFORMATION.

Mother and son--Returning fortitude--Self-devoted.

It was drawing close upon the half-yearly examination at the Grammar
School, and Harry was