CHAPTER XLV.
UNEXPECTED VISITORS.
Standing upon Beacon Cliff were three persons, watching with interest and deep anxiety the cadets’ cruiser as she lay off the coast a league or more.
They were Mrs. Merrill, the mother of the gallant middy, old Peggy, and a beautiful young girl whom the reader will recall as Virgene Rich, the fair witness who had testified so well in behalf of the young sailor in his affray with Scott Clemmons, Ben Birney, and others of like ilk at B——.
Mrs. Merrill read at a glance the danger of the vessel, when she saw that she was becalmed and a storm rising from seaward; but her anxiety would have been far greater had she known that the craft was crippled and might not be able to beat off the coast.
What her feelings would have been had she known that her only son was on board the vessel can well be imagined.
But though she saw that it was a vessel of war she did not connect Mark with her, as she supposed that his cruiser was in foreign seas, not having received his last letter from Lisbon, in which he had told her what the remainder of the voyage would be.
Mrs. Merrill looked several years younger than when Mark had gone to the Naval School.
Her really beautiful face had almost lost its expression of sadness and her form was still youthful and graceful.
Virgene Rich, true to her promise, had often ridden down to see Mrs. Merrill, and so attached had she become to her that Landlord Rich had asked her to become his daughter’s governess, and thus we find the young girl also an inmate of “Spook Hall.”
Mrs. Merrill had kept up the flower garden, made the wing in which she dwelt more comfortable, and, with a horse and phaeton, which she had purchased, did not seem near so far away from civilization as before.