'Ay, so they say, not a doubt of it. It's a pity, he was as smart a middy as any afloat, so they say. I saw the bo's'un myself, that was piping his eye like a baby to think of him safe ashore and the lad at the bottom.'
The stranger did not answer. His thoughts had flown to Kiah's young ladies, waiting and watching at home for the boy whom no favouring wind would blow home to them. How strange it seemed, he thought, that that young life should be cut off when so many would mourn for it, and that he, whose life or death made no difference to any one, should have come safely through so many strange accidents and changes and chances of fortune! And then he suddenly remembered that letter which Kiah had given him, and which had been in his pocket unthought of ever since. He felt as if he hardly liked to look at it now, as if it were presumption to read the words of one on whom so terrible a grief had fallen. But he took it out of his pocket, and unfolded it from its wrapping, and glanced at the beginning by the red light of the stormy sunset which was beginning to blaze in the western sky. And as he did so the heading caught his eye: 'Oakfield Cottage.'
He gave a great start, and half dropped the closely-written sheet. And then he laughed at himself. There might be other Oakfield Cottages in the world besides the one which stirred such a host of boyish memories by the very sound of its name. He turned the letter over to look at the signature. There it was, plain enough in the clear, legible writing:
'Your sincere friend,
'ANGELICA WYNDHAM.'
The reader put his hand before his eyes for a moment, seeming to feel again a pair of soft arms round his neck, a curly head pressed against his cheek, while a trembling child's voice whispered to him not to cry because they would wake Betty, and papa and mamma would come back. Little Angel, the little sister whom he had never seen but that once when they grew near together in a few minutes under the shadow of a great grief, she might well have grown into such a woman as old Kiah had spoken of with loving pride.
'Boat ahoy!'
The shout came faint and far away across the gleaming tossing water from where that red glow burned in the west. The fishermen were on the look out at once, a hail in those days might mean something serious; but their passenger sat with the letter unread in his hand, unheeding anything, reading instead a page out of the long ago past.
But after a minute or two the fishermen's excited words brought him back to the present.
'Boat? Not a bit of it. 'Tis a bit of a raft, some poor chap on a spar. English too, 'twas an English shout. Well, and if he was Boney himself we're bound to get him aboard.'
'Where is he?' asked the stranger, shading his eyes from the dazzling sun rays.