The kindly landlady, as plump and rosy as her husband, makes very much of the children, and the supper she places before them is a right hearty one, nor is Bob himself forgotten.
A very quiet and pleasant evening is spent, then good-nights are said, and the seafaring folks, as they humorously call themselves, go on board to bed.
Sammy is already sound asleep beneath the tarpaulin, and Ransey takes his little sister below to bed at once.
But father stops on deck a little while, to think and muse.
How still the night is! Not a breath of wind now; not a sound save the distant melancholy hooting of an owl as he flies low across the fields, the champ-champing of the horse in the stable, and an occasional plash in the canal as some great frog leaps off the bank.
Nothing more.
But high above shine God’s holy stars. There may be melancholy in the old sailor’s heart as he gazes skywards, but there is hope as well, for these little points of dazzling light bear his thoughts away to better worlds than this.
It is early morning again, and soon the barge is well on its way.
But when it is stopped in the middle of a somewhat lonesome moor, and Tandy takes his children on shore, the boy knows right well where they are going, though innocent little Babs doesn’t.