lochs; far from the moors and fells of Scotland.

A brief honeymoon of quiet, unmarred happiness, and Alan Campbell
received instructions to join his ship, ordered to Malta for three
years. His wife, of course, could not sail with him, so he took a
berth for her in one of the ordinary passenger steamers that run from
Southampton to the island. And after seeing her safe on board one
rainy April afternoon, her tearful face itself like April weather, he
took the evening mail-train to Plymouth, and the following morning was
on board his ship. It was not long before his impatience was
gratified, and the "Thunderer" steamed out into the English Channel.

Thus over the great waves, through time of sun and stars, through storm
and shine, sailed the two parted many miles of heaving sea; Minnie,
pale and trembling in her little cabin, with the noise of the waters
ever sounding in her sleepless ears; Alan pacing to and fro in the heat
and throbbing of the engines of the "Thunderer."

It was a joyful meeting at the island-fortress in the blue
Mediterranean. Alan obtained leave to sleep on shore, and took a
little white cottage that overlooked the bay, where the good ship
"Thunderer" lay at anchor; and there, at her outhanging window, every
evening Minnie would sit, looking so anxiously across the bay towards
the great black hull of the vessel, till a gig would put off that
brought Alan home to her.

So the days and weeks went on. The spring died into the summer's
flowery lap; the summer ripened and mellowed unto the golden autumn;
and when the year's late last months were come, there was another
inmate in the little cottage by the bay; another pair of eyes, blue as
the mother's, to greet Alan as he came home at night; another pair of
hands to hold and call his own.

The time ran as quickly as it ran happily. The three years passed, and
again Alan had to put his wife on board a passenger steamer bound for
England--this time with her boy Harry to bear her company, a sturdy
young gentleman of somewhat over two years; while he himself sailed for
Plymouth in the "Thunderer." And so it came to pass, that after many
such changes of abode, and many voyages over the dangerous waters,
twelve years from the date of their marriage, they came to Wilton.
They found lodgings at Mrs Valentine's farm, near the old church--a
strange contrast after the home on the blue waters of the
Mediterranean, but a very nice contrast withal. And it