Strange it is and wonderful to mark how upon this planet of ours
the smallest and most insignificant of events set a train of
consequences in motion which act and react until their final
results are portentous and incalculable. Set a force rolling,
however small; and who can say where it shall end, or what it may
lead to! Trifles develop into tragedies, and the bagatelle of one
day ripens into the catastrophe of the next. An oyster throws out
a secretion to surround a grain of sand, and so a pearl comes into
being; a pearl diver fishes it up, a merchant buys it and sells it
to a jeweller, who disposes of it to a customer. The customer is
robbed of it by two scoundrels who quarrel over the booty. One
slays the other, and perishes himself upon the scaffold. Here is
a direct chain of events with a sick mollusc for its first link,
and a gallows for its last one. Had that grain of sand not chanced
to wash in between the shells of the bivalve, two living breathing
beings with all their potentialities for good and for evil would
not have been blotted out from among their fellows. Who shall
undertake to judge what is really small and what is great?

Thus when in the year 1821 Don Diego Salvador bethought
him that if it paid the heretics in England to import the bark of
his cork oaks, it would pay him also to found a factory by which
the corks might be cut and sent out ready made, surely at first
sight no very vital human interests would appear to be affected.
Yet there were poor folk who would suffer, and suffer acutely--
women who would weep, and men who would become sallow and hungry-
looking and dangerous in places of which the Don had never heard,
and all on account of that one idea which had flashed across him as
he strutted, cigarettiferous, beneath the grateful shadow of his
limes. So crowded is this old globe of ours, and so interlaced our
interests, that one cannot think a new thought without some poor
devil being the better or the worse for it.

Don Diego Salvador was a capitalist, and the abstract thought soon
took the concrete form of a great square plastered building wherein
a couple of hundred of his swarthy countrymen worked with deft
nimble fingers at a rate of pay which no English artisan could have
accepted. Within a few months the result of this new competition
was an abrupt fall of prices in the trade, which was serious for
the largest firms and disastrous for the smaller ones. A few old-
established houses held on as they were, others reduced their
establishments and cut down their expenses, while one or two put up
their shutters and confessed themselves beaten. In this last
unfortunate category was the ancient and respected firm of
Fairbairn Brothers of Brisport.

Several causes had led up to this disaster, though Don Diego's
debut as a corkcutter had brought matters to a head. When a
couple of generations back the original Fairbairn had founded the
business, Brisport was a little fishing town with no outlet or
occupation for her superfluous population. Men were glad to have
safe and continuous work upon any terms. All this was altered now,
for the town was expanding into the centre of a large district in
the west, and the demand for labour and its remuneration had
proportionately increased. Again, in the old days, when carriage
was ruinous and communication slow, the vintners of Exeter and of
Barnstaple were glad to buy their corks from their neighbour of
Brisport; but now the large London houses sent down their
travellers, who competed with each other to gain the local custom,
until profits were cut down to the vanishing point. For a long
time the firm had been in a precarious position, but this further
drop in prices settled the matter, and compelled Mr. Charles
Fairbairn, the acting manager, to close his establishment.

It was a murky, foggy Saturday afternoon in November when the hands
were paid for the last time, and the old building was to be finally
abandoned. Mr. Fairbairn, an anxious-faced, sorrow-worn man, stood
on a raised dais by the cashier while he handed the little pile of
hardly-earned shillings and coppers to each successive workman as
the long procession filed past his table. It was usual with the
employes to clatter away the instant that they had been paid, like
so many children let out of school; but to-day they waited,
forming little groups over the great dreary room, and discussing in
subdued voices the misfortune which had come upon their employers,
and the future which awaited themselves. When the last pile of
coins had been handed across the table, and the last name checked
by the cashier, the whole throng faced silently round to the man
who had been their master, and waited expectantly for any words
which he might have to say to them.

Mr. Charles Fairbairn had not expected this, and it embarrassed
him. He had waited as a matter of routine duty until the wages
were paid, but he was a taciturn, slow-witted man, and he had not
foreseen this sudden call upon his oratorical powers. He stroked
his thin cheek nervously with his long white fingers, and looked
down with weak watery eyes at the mosaic of upturned serious faces.

"I am sorry that we have to part, my men," he said at last in a
crackling voice. "It's a bad day for all of us, and for Brisport
too. For three years we have been losing money over the works. We
held on in the hope of a change coming, but matters are going from
bad to worse. There's nothing for it but to give it up before the
balance of our fortune is swallowed up. I hope you may all be able
to get work of some sort before very long. Good-bye, and God bless
you!"

"God bless you, sir! God bless you!" cried a chorus of rough
voices. "Three cheers for Mr. Charles Fairbairn!" shouted a
bright-eyed, smart young fellow, springing up upon a bench and
waving his peaked cap in the air. The crowd responded to the call,
but their huzzas wanted the true ring which only a joyous heart can
give. Then they began to flock out into the sunlight, looking back
as they went at the long deal tables and the cork-strewn floor--
above all at the sad-faced, solitary man, whose cheeks were flecked
with colour at the rough cordiality of their farewell.

"Huxford," said the cashier, touching on the shoulder the young
fellow who had led the cheering; "the governor wants to speak to
you."

The workman turned back and stood swinging his cap awkwardly in
front of his ex-employer, while the crowd pushed on until the
doorway was clear, and the heavy fog-wreaths rolled unchecked into
the deserted tactory.

"Ah, John!" said Mr. Fairbairn, coming suddenly out of his reverie
and taking up a letter from the table. "You have been in my
service since you were a boy, and you have shown that you merited
the trust which I have placed in you. From what I have heard I
think I am right in saying that this sudden want of work will
affect your plans more than it will many of my other hands."

"I was to be married at Shrovetide," the man answered, tracing a
pattern upon the table with his horny forefinger. "I'll have to
find work first."

"And work, my poor fellow, is by no means easy to find. You see
you have been in this groove all your life, and are unfit for
anything else. It's true you've been my foreman, but even
that won't help you, for the factories all over England are
discharging hands, and there's not a vacancy to be had. It's a bad
outlook for you and such as you."

"What would you advise, then, sir?" asked John Huxford.

"That's what I was coming to. I have a letter here from Sheridan
and Moore, of Montreal, asking for a good hand to take charge of a
workroom. If you think it will suit you, you can go out by the
next boat. The wages are far in excess of anything which I have
been able to give you."

"Why, sir, this is real kind of you," the young workman said
earnestly. "She--my girl--Mary, will be as grateful to you as I
am. I know what you say is right, and that if I had to look for
work I should be likely to spend the little that I have laid by
towards housekeeping before I found it. But, sir, with your leave
I'd like to speak to her about it before I made up my mind. Could
you leave it open for a few hours?"

"The mail goes out to-morrow," Mr. Fairbairn answered. "If you
decide to accept you can write tonight. Here is their letter,
which will give you their address."

John Huxford took the precious paper with a grateful heart. An
hour ago his future had been all black, but now this rift of light
had broken in the west, giving promise of better things. He would
have liked to have said something expressive of his feelings to his
employer, but the English nature is not effusive, and he could
not get beyond a few choking awkward words which were as awkwardly
received by his benefactor. With a scrape and a bow, he turned on
his heel, and plunged out into the foggy street.

So thick was the vapour that the houses over the way were only a
vague loom, but the foreman hurried on with springy steps through
side streets and winding lanes, past walls where the fishermen's
nets were drying, and over cobble-stoned alleys redolent of
herring, until he reached a modest line of whitewashed cottages
fronting the sea. At the door of one of these the young man
tapped, and then without waiting for a response, pressed down the
latch and walked in.

An old silvery-haired woman and a young girl hardly out of her
teens were sitting on either side of the fire, and the latter
sprang to her feet as he entered.

"You've got some good news, John," she cried, putting her hands
upon his shoulders, and looking into his eyes. "I can tell it from
your step. Mr. Fairbairn is going to carry on after all."

"No, dear, not so good as that," John Huxford answered, smoothing
back her rich brown hair; "but I have an offer of a place in
Canada, with good money, and if you think as I do, I shall go out
to it, and you can follow with the granny whenever I have made all
straight for you at the other side. What say you to that, my
lass?"

"Why, surely, John, what you think is right must be for the
best," said the girl quietly, with trust and confidence in her pale
plain face and loving hazel eyes. "But poor granny, how is she to
cross the seas?"

"Oh, never mind about me," the old woman broke in cheerfully.
"I'll be no drag on you. If you want granny, granny's not too old
to travel; and if you don't want her, why she can look after the
cottage, and have an English home ready for you whenever you turn
back to the old country."

"Of course we shall need you, granny," John Huxford said, with a
cheery laugh. "Fancy leaving granny behind! That would never do!
Mary! But if you both come out, and if we are married all snug and
proper at Montreal, we'll look through the whole city until we find
a house something like this one, and we'll have creepers on the
outside just the same, and when the doors are shut and we sit round
the fire on the winter's nights, I'm hanged if we'll be able to
tell that we're not at home. Besides, Mary, it's the same speech
out there, and the same king and the same flag; it's not like a
foreign country."

"No, of course not," Mary answered with conviction. She was an
orphan with no living relation save her old grandmother, and no
thought in life but to make a helpful and worthy wife to the man
she loved. Where these two were she could not fail to find
happiness. If John went to Canada, then Canada became home to her,
for what had Brisport to offer when he was gone?

"I'm to write to-night then and accept?" the young man asked.
"I knew you would both be of the same mind as myself, but of course
I couldn't close with the offer until we had talked it over. I can
get started in a week or two, and then in a couple of months I'll
have all ready for you on the other side."

"It will be a weary, weary time until we hear from you, dear John,"
said Mary, clasping his hand; "but it's God's will, and we must be
patient. Here's pen and ink. You can sit at the table and write
the letter which is to take the three of us across the Atlantic."
Strange how Don Diego's thoughts were moulding human lives in the
little Devon village.

The acceptance was duly despatched, and John Huxford began
immediately to prepare for his departure, for the Montreal firm had
intimated that the vacancy was a certainty, and that the chosen man
might come out without delay to take over his duties. In a very
few days his scanty outfit was completed, and he started off in a
coasting vessel for Liverpool, where he was to catch the passenger
ship for Quebec.

"Remember, John," Mary whispered, as he pressed her to his heart
upon the Brisport quay, "the cottage is our own, and come what may,
we have always that to fall back upon. If things should chance to
turn out badly over there, we have always a roof to cover us.
There you will find me until you send word to us to come."

"And that will be very soon, my lass," he answered cheerfully, with
a last embrace. "Good-bye, granny, good-bye." The ship was a mile
and more from the land before he lost sight of the figures of
the straight slim girl and her old companion, who stood watching
and waving to him from the end of the grey stone quay. It was with
a sinking heart and a vague feeling of impending disaster that he
saw them at last as minute specks in the distance, walking townward
and disappearing amid the crowd who lined the beach.

From Liverpool the old woman and her granddaughter received a
letter from John announcing that he was just starting in the barque
St. Lawrence, and six weeks afterwards a second longer epistle
informed them of his safe arrival at Quebec, and gave them his
first impressions of the country. After that a long unbroken
silence set in. Week after week and month after month passed by,
and never a word came from across the seas. A year went over their
heads, and yet another, but no news of the absentee. Sheridan and
Moore were written to, and replied that though John Huxford's
letter had reached them, he had never presented himself, and they
had been forced to fill up the vacancy as best they could. Still
Mary and her grandmother hoped against hope, and looked out for the
letter-carrier every morning with such eagerness, that the kind-
hearted man would often make a detour rather than pass the two pale
anxious faces which peered at him from the cottage window. At
last, three years after the young foreman's disappearance, old
granny died, and Mary was left alone, a broken sorrowful woman,
living as best she might on a small annuity which had descended to
her, and eating her heart out as she brooded over the mystery
which hung over the fate of her lover.

Among the shrewd west-country neighbours there had long, however,
ceased to be any mystery in the matter. Huxford arrived safely in
Canada--so much was proved by his letter. Had he met with his end
in any sudden way during the journey between Quebec and Montreal,
there must have been some official inquiry, and his luggage would
have sufficed to have established his identity. Yet the Canadian
police had been communicated with, and had returned a positive
answer that no inquest had been held, or any body found, which
could by any possibility be that of the young Englishman. The only
alternative appeared to be that he had taken the first opportunity
to break all the old ties, and had slipped away to the backwoods or
to the States to commence life anew under an altered name. Why he
should do this no one professed to know, but that he had done it
appeared only too probable from the facts. Hence many a deep growl
of righteous anger rose from the brawny smacksmen when Mary with
her pale face and sorrow-sunken head passed along the quays on her
way to her daily marketing; and it is more than likely that if the
missing man had turned up in Brisport he might have met with some
rough words or rougher usage, unless he could give some very good
reason for his strange conduct. This popular view of the case
never, however, occurred to the simple trusting heart of the lonely
girl, and as the years rolled by her grief and her suspense were
never for an instant tinged with a doubt as to the good faith
of the missing man. From youth she grew into middle age, and from
that into the autumn of her life, patient, long-suffering, and
faithful, doing good as far as lay in her power, and waiting humbly
until fate should restore either in this world or the next that
which it had so mysteriously deprived her of.

In the meantime neither the opinion held by the minority that John
Huxford was dead, nor that of the majority, which pronounced him to
be faithless, represented the true state of the case. Still alive,
and of stainless honour, he had yet been singled out by fortune as
her victim in one of those strange freaks which are of such rare
occurrence, and so beyond the general experience, that they might
be put by as incredible, had we not the most trustworthy evidence
of their occasional possibility.

Landing at Quebec, with his heart full of hope and courage, John
selected a dingy room in a back street, where the terms were less
exorbitant than elsewhere, and conveyed thither the two boxes which
contained his worldly goods. After taking up his quarters there he
had half a mind to change again, for the landlady and the fellow-
lodgers were by no means to his taste; but the Montreal coach
started within a day or two, and he consoled himself by the thought
that the discomfort would only last for that short time. Having
written home to Mary to announce his safe arrival, he employed
himself in seeing as much of the town as was possible, walking
about all day, and only returning to his room at night.

It happened, however, that the house on which the unfortunate youth
had pitched was one which was notorious for the character of its
inmates. He had been directed to it by a pimp, who found regular
employment in hanging about the docks and decoying new-comers to
this den. The fellow's specious manner and proffered civility had
led the simple-hearted west-countryman into the toils, and though
his instinct told him that he was in unsafe company, he refrained,
unfortunately, from at once making his escape. He contented
himself with staying out all day, and associating as little as
possible with the other inmates. From the few words which he did
let drop, however, the landlady gathered that he was a stranger
without a single friend in the country to inquire after him should
misfortune overtake him.

The house had an evil reputation for the hocussing of sailors,
which was done not only for the purpose of plundering them, but
also to supply outgoing ships with crews, the men being carried on
board insensible, and not coming to until the ship was well down
the St. Lawrence. This trade caused the wretches who followed it
to be experts in the use of stupefying drugs, and they determined
to practise their arts upon their friendless lodger, so as to have
an opportunity of ransacking his effects, and of seeing what it
might be worth their while to purloin. During the day he
invariably locked his door and carried off the key in his
pocket, but if they could render him insensible for the night they
could examine his boxes at their leisure, and deny afterwards that
he had ever brought with him the articles which he missed. It
happened, therefore, upon the eve of Huxford's departure from
Quebec, that he found, upon returning to his lodgings, that his
landlady and her two ill-favoured sons, who assisted her in her
trade, were waiting up for him over a bowl of punch, which they
cordially invited him to share. It was a bitterly cold night, and
the fragrant steam overpowered any suspicions which the young
Englishman may have entertained, so he drained off a bumper, and
then, retiring to his bedroom, threw himself upon his bed without
undressing, and fell straight into a dreamless slumber, in which he
still lay when the three conspirators crept into his chamber, and,
having opened his boxes, began to investigate his effects.

It may have been that the speedy action of the drug caused its
effect to be evanescent, or, perhaps, that the strong constitution
of the victim threw it off with unusual rapidity. Whatever the
cause, it is certain that John Huxford suddenly came to himself,
and found the foul trio squatted round their booty, which they were
dividing into the two categories of what was of value and should be
taken, and what was valueless and might therefore be left. With a
bound he sprang out of bed, and seizing the fellow nearest him by
the collar, he slung him through the open doorway. His brother
rushed at him, but the young Devonshire man met him with such a
facer that he dropped in a heap upon the ground.
Unfortunately, the violence of the blow caused him to overbalance
himself, and, tripping over his prostrate antagonist, he came down
heavily upon his face. Before he could rise, the old hag sprang
upon his back and clung to him, shrieking to her son to bring the
poker. John managed to shake himself clear of them both, but
before he could stand on his guard he was felled from behind by a
crashing blow from an iron bar, which stretched him senseless upon
the floor.

"You've hit too hard, Joe," said the old woman, looking down at the
prostrate figure. "I heard the bone go."

"If I hadn't fetched him down he'd ha' been too many for us," said
the young villain sulkily.

"Still, you might ha' done it without killing him, clumsy," said
his mother. She had had a large experience of such scenes, and
knew the difference between a stunning blow and a fatal one.

"He's still breathing," the other said, examining him; "the back o'
his head's like a bag o' dice though. The skull's all splintered.
He can't last. What are we to do?"

"He'll never come to himself again," the other brother remarked.
"Sarve him right. Look at my face! Let's see, mother; who's in
the house?"

"Only four drunk sailors."

"They wouldn't turn out for any noise. It's all quiet in the
street. Let's carry him down a bit, Joe, and leave him there. He
can die there, and no one think the worse of us."

"Take all the papers out of his pocket, then," the mother
suggested; "they might help the police to trace him. His watch,
too, and his money--L3 odd; better than nothing. Now carry him
softly and don't slip."

Kicking off their shoes, the two brothers carried the dying man
down stairs and along the deserted street for a couple of hundred
yards. There they laid him among the snow, where he was found by
the night patrol, who carried him on a shutter to the hospital. He
was duly examined by the resident surgeon, who bound up the wounded
head, but gave it as his opinion that the man could not possibly
live for more than twelve hours.

Twelve hours passed, however, and yet another twelve, but John
Huxford still struggled hard for his life. When at the end of
three days he was found to be still breathing, the interest of the
doctors became aroused at his extraordinary vitality, and they bled
him, as the fashion was in those days, and surrounded his shattered
head with icebags. It may have been on account of these measures,
or it may have been in spite of them, but at the end of a week's
deep trance the nurse in charge was astonished to hear a gabbling
noise, and to find the stranger sitting up upon the couch and
staring about him with wistful, wondering eyes. The surgeons were
summoned to behold the phenomenon, and warmly congratulated each
other upon the success of their treatment.

"You have been on the brink of the grave, my man," said one of
them, pressing the bandaged head back on to the pillow; "you must
not excite yourself. What is your name?"

No answer, save a wild stare.

"Where do you come from?"

Again no answer.

"He is mad," one suggested. "Or a foreigner," said another.
"There were no papers on him when he came in. His linen is marked
`J. H.' Let us try him in French and German."

They tested him with as many tongues as they could muster among
them, but were compelled at last to give the matter over and to
leave their silent patient, still staring up wild-eyed at the
whitewashed hospital ceiling.

For many weeks John lay in the hospital, and for many weeks efforts
were made to gain some clue as to his antecedents, but in vain. He
showed, as the time rolled by, not only by his demeanour, but also
by the intelligence with which he began to pick up fragments of
sentences, like a clever child learning to talk, that his mind was
strong enough in the present, though it was a complete blank as to
the past. The man's memory of his whole life before the fatal blow
was entirely and absolutely erased. He neither knew his name, his
language, his home, his business, nor anything else. The doctors
held learned consultations upon him, and discoursed upon the centre
of memory and depressed tables, deranged nerve-cells and cerebral
congestions, but all their polysyllables began and ended at the
fact that the man's memory was gone, and that it was beyond
the power of science to restore it. During the weary months of his
convalescence he picked up reading and writing, but with the return
of his strength came no return of his former life. England,
Devonshire, Brisport, Mary, Granny--the words brought no
recollection to his mind. All was absolute darkness. At last he
was discharged, a friendless, tradeless, penniless man, without a
past, and with very little to look to in the future. His very name
was altered, for it had been necessary to invent one. John Huxford
had passed away, and John Hardy took his place among mankind. Here
was a strange outcome of a Spanish gentleman's tobacco-inspired
meditations.

John's case had aroused some discussion and curiosity in Quebec, so
that he was not suffered to drift into utter helplessness upon
emerging from the hospital. A Scotch manufacturer named M`Kinlay
found him a post as porter in his establishment, and for a long
time he worked at seven dollars a week at the loading and unloading
of vans. In the course of years it was noticed, however, that his
memory, however defective as to the past, was extremely reliable
and accurate when concerned with anything which had occurred since
his accident. From the factory he was promoted into the counting-
house, and the year 1835 found him a junior clerk at a salary of
L120 a year. Steadily and surely John Hardy fought his way upward
from post to post, with his whole heart and mind devoted to the
business. In 1840 he was third clerk, in 1845 he was second, and
in 1852 he became manager of the whole vast establishment, and
second only to Mr. M`Kinlay himself.

There were few who grudged John this rapid advancement, for it was
obviously due to neither chance nor favouritism, but entirely to
his marvellous powers of application and industry. From early
morning until late in the night he laboured hard in the service of
his employer, checking, overlooking, superintending, setting an
example to all of cheerful devotion to duty. As he rose from one
post to another his salary increased, but it caused no alteration
in his mode of living, save that it enabled him to be more open-
handed to the poor. He signalised his promotion to the managership
by a donation of L1000 to the hospital in which he had been
treated a quarter of a century before. The remainder of his
earnings he allowed to accumulate in the business, drawing a small
sum quarterly for his sustenance, and still residing in the humble
dwelling which he had occupied when he was a warehouse porter. In
spite of his success he was a sad, silent, morose man, solitary in
his habits, and possessed always of a vague undefined yearning, a
dull feeling of dissatisfaction and of craving which never
abandoned him. Often he would strive with his poor crippled brain
to pierce the curtain which divided him from the past, and to solve
the enigma of his youthful existence, but though he sat many a time
by the fire until his head throbbed with his efforts, John Hardy
could never recall the least glimpse of John Huxford's history.

On one occasion he had, in the interests of the firm, to journey to
Quebec, and to visit the very cork factory which had tempted him to
leave England. Strolling through the workroom with the foreman,
John automatically, and without knowing what he was doing, picked
up a square piece of the bark, and fashioned it with two or three
deft cuts of his penknife into a smooth tapering cork. His
companion picked it out of his hand and examined it with the eye of
an expert. "This is not the first cork which you have cut by many
a hundred, Mr. Hardy," he remarked. "Indeed you are wrong," John
answered, smiling; "I never cut one before in my life."
"Impossible!" cried the foreman. "Here's another bit of cork. Try
again." John did his best to repeat the performance, but the
brains of the manager interfered with the trained muscles of the
corkcutter. The latter had not forgotten their cunning, but they
needed to be left to themselves, and not directed by a mind which
knew nothing of the matter. Instead of the smooth graceful shape,
he could produce nothing but rough-hewn clumsy cylinders. "It must
have been chance," said the foreman, "but I could have sworn that
it was the work of an old hand!"

As the years passed John's smooth English skin had warped and
crinkled until he was as brown and as seamed as a walnut. His
hair, too, after many years of iron-grey, had finally become as
white as the winters of his adopted country. Yet he was a hale and
upright old man, and when he at last retired from the manager-
ship of the firm with which he had been so long connected, he
bore the weight of his seventy years lightly and bravely. He was
in the peculiar position himself of not knowing his own age, as it
was impossible for him to do more than guess at how old he was at
the time of his accident.

The Franco-German War came round, and while the two great rivals
were destroying each other, their more peaceful neighbours were
quietly ousting them out of their markets and their commerce. Many
English ports benefited by this condition of things, but none more
than Brisport. It had long ceased to be a fishing village, but was
now a large and prosperous town, with a great breakwater in place
of the quay on which Mary had stood, and a frontage of terraces and
grand hotels where all the grandees of the west country came when
they were in need of a change. All these extensions had made
Brisport the centre of a busy trade, and her ships found their way
into every harbour in the world. Hence it was no wonder,
especially in that very busy year of 1870, that several Brisport
vessels were lying in the river and alongside the wharves of
Quebec.

One day John Hardy, who found time hang a little on his hands since
his retirement from business, strolled along by the water's edge
listening to the clanking of the steam winches, and watching the
great barrels and cases as they were swung ashore and piled upon
the wharf. He had observed the coming in of a great ocean steamer,
and having waited until she was safely moored, he was turning
away, when a few words fell upon his ear uttered by some one on
board a little weather-beaten barque close by him. It was only
some commonplace order that was bawled out, but the sound fell upon
the old man's ears with a strange mixture of disuse and
familiarity. He stood by the vessel and heard the seamen at their
work, all speaking with the same broad, pleasant jingling accent.
Why did it send such a thrill through his nerves to listen to it?
He sat down upon a coil of rope and pressed his hands to his
temples, drinking in the long-forgotten dialect, and trying to
piece together in his mind the thousand half-formed nebulous
recollections which were surging up in it. Then he rose, and
walking along to the stern he read the name of the ship, The
Sunlight, Brisport. Brisport! Again that flush and tingle
through every nerve. Why was that word and the men's speech so
familiar to him? He walked moodily home, and all night he lay
tossing and sleepless, pursuing a shadowy something which was ever
within his reach, and yet which ever evaded him.

Early next morning he was up and down on the wharf listening to the
talk of the west-country sailors. Every word they spoke seemed to
him to revive his memory and bring him nearer to the light. From
time to time they paused in their work, and seeing the white-haired
stranger sitting so silently and attentively, they laughed at him
and broke little jests upon him. And even these jests had a
familiar sound to the exile, as they very well might, seeing that
they were the same which he had heard in his youth, for no one
ever makes a new joke in England. So he sat through the long day,
bathing himself in the west-country speech, and waiting for the
light to break.

And it happened that when the sailors broke off for their mid-day
meal, one of them, either out of curiosity or good nature, came
over to the old watcher and greeted him. So John asked him to be
seated on a log by his side, and began to put many questions to him
about the country from which he came, and the town. All which the
man answered glibly enough, for there is nothing in the world that
a sailor loves to talk of so much as of his native place, for it
pleases him to show that he is no mere wanderer, but that he has a
home to receive him whenever he shall choose to settle down to a
quiet life. So the seaman prattled away about the Town Hall and
the Martello Tower, and the Esplanade, and Pitt Street and the High
Street, until his companion suddenly shot out a long eager arm and
caught him by the wrist. "Look here, man," he said, in a low quick
whisper. "Answer me truly as you hope for mercy. Are not the
streets that run out of the High Street, Fox Street, Caroline
Street, and George Street, in the order named?" "They are," the
sailor answered, shrinking away from the wild flashing eyes. And
at that moment John's memory came back to him, and he saw clear and
distinct his life as it had been and as it should have been, with
every minutest detail traced as in letters of fire. Too stricken
to cry out, too stricken to weep, he could only hurry away
homewards wildly and aimlessly; hurry as fast as his aged limbs
would carry him, as if, poor soul! there were some chance yet of
catching up the fifty years which had gone by. Staggering and
tremulous he hastened on until a film seemed to gather over his
eyes, and throwing his arms into the air with a great cry, "Oh,
Mary, Mary! Oh, my lost, lost life!" he fell senseless upon the
pavement.

The storm of emotion which had passed through him, and the mental
shock which he had undergone, would have sent many a man into a
raging fever, but John was too strong-willed and too practical to
allow his strength to be wasted at the very time when he needed it
most. Within a few days he realised a portion of his property, and
starting for New York, caught the first mail steamer to England.
Day and night, night and day, he trod the quarter-deck, until the
hardy sailors watched the old man with astonishment, and marvelled
how any human being could do so much upon so little sleep. It was
only by this unceasing exercise, by wearing down his vitality until
fatigue brought lethargy, that he could prevent himself from
falling into a very frenzy of despair. He hardly dared ask himself
what was the object of this wild journey? What did he expect?
Would Mary be still alive? She must be a very old woman. If he
could but see her and mingle his tears with hers he would be
content. Let her only know that it had been no fault of his, and
that they had both been victims to the same cruel fate. The
cottage was her own, and she had said that she would wait for
him there until she heard from him. Poor lass, she had never
reckoned on such a wait as this.

At last the Irish lights were sighted and passed, Land's End lay
like a blue fog upon the water, and the great steamer ploughed its
way along the bold Cornish coast until it dropped its anchor in
Plymouth Bay. John hurried to the railway station, and within a
few hours he found himself back once more in his native town, which
he had quitted a poor corkcutter, half a century before.

But was it the same town? Were it not for the name engraved all
over the station and on the hotels, John might have found a
difficulty in believing it. The broad, well-paved streets, with
the tram lines laid down the centre, were very different from the
narrow winding lanes which he could remember. The spot upon which
the station had been built was now the very centre of the town, but
in the old days it would have been far out in the fields. In every
direction, lines of luxurious villas branched away in streets and
crescents bearing names which were new to the exile. Great
warehouses, and long rows of shops with glittering fronts, showed
him how enormously Brisport had increased in wealth as well as in
dimensions. It was only when he came upon the old High Street that
John began to feel at home. It was much altered, but still it was
recognisable, and some few of the buildings were just as he had
left them. There was the place where Fairbairn's cork works had
been. It was now occupied by a great brand-new hotel. And
there was the old grey Town Hall. The wanderer turned down beside
it, and made his way with eager steps but a sinking heart in the
direction of the line of cottages which he used to know so well.

It was not difficult for him to find where they had been. The sea
at least was as of old, and from it he could tell where the
cottages had stood. But alas, where were they now! In their place
an imposing crescent of high stone houses reared their tall front
to the beach. John walked wearily down past their palatial
entrances, feeling heart-sore and despairing, when suddenly a
thrill shot through him, followed by a warm glow of excitement and
of hope, for, standing a little back from the line, and looking as
much out of place as a bumpkin in a ballroom, was an old
whitewashed cottage, with wooden porch and walls bright with
creeping plants. He rubbed his eyes and stared again, but there it
stood with its diamond-paned windows and white muslin curtains, the
very same down to the smallest details, as it had been on the day
when he last saw it. Brown hair had become white, and fishing
hamlets had changed into cities, but busy hands and a faithful
heart had kept granny's cottage unchanged and ready for the
wanderer.

And now, when he had reached his very haven of rest, John Huxford's
mind became more filled with apprehension than ever, and he came
over so deadly sick, that he had to sit down upon one of the beach
benches which faced the cottage. An old fisherman was perched
at one end of it, smoking his black clay pipe, and he remarked
upon the wan face and sad eyes of the stranger.

"You have overtired yourself," he said. "It doesn't do for old
chaps like you and me to forget our years."

"I'm better now, thank you," John answered. "Can you tell me,
friend, how that one cottage came among all those fine houses?"

"Why," said the old fellow, thumping his crutch energetically upon
the ground, "that cottage belongs to the most obstinate woman in
all England. That woman, if you'll believe me, has been offered
the price of the cottage ten times over, and yet she won't part
with it. They have even promised to remove it stone by stone, and
put it up on some more convenient place, and pay her a good round
sum into the bargain, but, God bless you! she wouldn't so much as
hear of it."

"And why was that?" asked John.

"Well, that's just the funny part of it. It's all on account of a
mistake. You see her spark went away when I was a youngster, and
she's got it into her head that he may come back some day, and that
he won't know where to go unless the cottage is there. Why, if the
fellow were alive he would be as old as you, but I've no doubt he's
dead long ago. She's well quit of him, for he must have been a
scamp to abandon her as he did."

"Oh, he abandoned her, did he?"

"Yes--went off to the States, and never so much as sent a word to
bid her good-bye. It was a cruel shame, it was, for the girl
has been a-waiting and a-pining for him ever since. It's my belief
that it's fifty years' weeping that blinded her."

"She is blind!" cried John, half rising to his feet.

"Worse than that," said the fisherman. "She's mortal ill, and not
expected to live. Why, look ye, there's the doctor's carriage a-
waiting at her door."

At this evil tidings old John sprang up and hurried over to the
cottage, where he met the physician returning to his brougham.

"How is your patient, doctor?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"Very bad, very bad," said the man of medicine pompously. "If she
continues to sink she will be in great danger; but if, on the other
hand, she takes a turn, it is possible that she may recover," with
which oracular answer he drove away in a cloud of dust.

John Huxford was still hesitating at the doorway, not knowing how
to announce himself, or how far a shock might be dangerous to the
sufferer, when a gentleman in black came bustling up.

"Can you tell me, my man, if this is where the sick woman is?" he
asked.

John nodded, and the clergyman passed in, leaving the door half
open. The wanderer waited until he had gone into the inner room,
and then slipped into the front parlour, where he had spent so many
happy hours. All was the same as ever, down to the smallest
ornaments, for Mary had been in the habit whenever anything was
broken of replacing it with a duplicate, so that there might
be no change in the room. He stood irresolute, looking about him,
until he heard a woman's voice from the inner chamber, and stealing
to the door he peeped in.

The invalid was reclining upon a couch, propped up with pillows,
and her face was turned full towards John as he looked round the
door. He could have cried out as his eyes rested upon it, for
there were Mary's pale, plain, sweet homely features as smooth and
as unchanged as though she were still the half child, half woman,
whom he had pressed to his heart on the Brisport quay. Her calm,
eventless, unselfish life had left none of those rude traces upon
her countenance which are the outward emblems of internal conflict
and an unquiet soul. A chaste melancholy had refined and softened
her expression, and her loss of sight had been compensated for by
that placidity which comes upon the faces of the blind. With her
silvery hair peeping out beneath her snow-white cap, and a bright
smile upon her sympathetic face, she was the old Mary improved and
developed, with something ethereal and angelic superadded.

"You will keep a tenant in the cottage," she was saying to the
clergyman, who sat with his back turned to the observer. "Choose
some poor deserving folk in the parish who will be glad of a home
free. And when he comes you will tell him that I have waited for
him until I have been forced to go on, but that he will find me on
the other side still faithful and true. There's a little money
too--only a few pounds--but I should like him to have it when
he comes, for he may need it, and then you will tell the folk you
put in to be kind to him, for he will be grieved, poor lad, and to
tell him that I was cheerful and happy up to the end. Don't let
him know that I ever fretted, or he may fret too."

Now John listened quietly to all this from behind the door, and
more than once he had to put his hand to his throat, but when she
had finished, and when he thought of her long, blameless, innocent
life, and saw the dear face looking straight at him, and yet unable
to see him, it became too much for his manhood, and he burst out
into an irrepressible choking sob which shook his very frame. And
then occurred a strange thing, for though he had spoken no word,
the old woman stretched out her arms to him, and cried, "Oh,
Johnny, Johnny! Oh dear, dear Johnny, you have come back to me
again," and before the parson could at all understand what had
happened, those two faithful lovers were in each other's arms,
weeping over each other, and patting each other's silvery heads,
with their hearts so full of joy that it almost compensated for all
that weary fifty years of waiting.

It is hard to say how long they rejoiced together. It seemed a
very short time to them and a very long one to the reverend
gentleman, who was thinking at last of stealing away, when Mary
recollected his presence and the courtesy which was due to him.
"My heart is full of joy, sir," she said; "it is God's will that I
should not see my Johnny, but I can call his image up as clear as
if I had my eyes. Now stand up, John, and I will let the
gentleman see how well I remember you. He is as tall, sir, as the
second shelf, as straight as an arrow, his face brown, and his eyes
bright and clear. His hair is well-nigh black, and his moustache
the same--I shouldn't wonder if he had whiskers as well by this
time. Now, sir, don't you think I can do without my sight?" The
clergyman listened to her description, and looking at the battered,
white-haired man before him, he hardly knew whether to laugh or to
cry.

But it all proved to be a laughing matter in the end, for, whether
it was that her illness had taken some natural turn, or that John's
return had startled it away, it is certain that from that day Mary
steadily improved until she was as well as ever. "No special
license for me," John had said sturdily. "It looks as if we were
ashamed of what we are doing, as though we hadn't the best right to
be married of any two folk in the parish." So the banns were put
up accordingly, and three times it was announced that John Huxford,
bachelor, was going to be united to Mary Howden, spinster, after
which, no one objecting, they were duly married accordingly. "We
may not have very long in this world," said old John, "but at least
we shall start fair and square in the next."

John's share in the Quebec business was sold out, and gave rise to
a very interesting legal question as to whether, knowing that his
name was Huxford, he could still sign that of Hardy, as was
necessary for the completion of the business. It was decided,
however, that on his producing two trustworthy witnesses to
his identity all would be right, so the property was duly realised
and produced a very handsome fortune. Part of this John devoted to
building a pretty villa just outside Brisport, and the heart of the
proprietor of Beach Terrace leaped within him when he learned that
the cottage was at last to be abandoned, and that it would no
longer break the symmetry and impair the effect of his row of
aristocratic mansions.

And there in their snug new home, sitting out on the lawn in the
summer-time, and on either side of the fire in the winter, that
worthy old couple continued for many years to live as innocently
and as happily as two children. Those who knew them well say that
there was never a shadow between them, and that the love which
burned in their aged hearts was as high and as holy as that of any
young couple who ever went to the altar. And through all the
country round, if ever man or woman were in distress and fighting
against hard times, they had only to go up to the villa to receive
help, and that sympathy which is more precious than help. So when
at last John and Mary fell asleep in their ripe old age, within a
few hours of each other, they had all the poor and the needy and
the friendless of the parish among their mourners, and in talking
over the troubles which these two had faced so bravely, they
learned that their own miseries also were but passing things, and
that faith and truth can never miscarry, either in this existence
or the next.