"The ship sailed Home without him. He wrote—by another vessel—to the young woman he was to have married, begging her forgiveness.... He had loved her, he said, and looked to be happy with her. But the sunshine and perfume and color of them foreign places, and the spell of the beauty of their wild brown foreign women was over him. He could not come back.... He never may come back again.... But if it happened so—and he, being old and worn, and weary of strange ways and distant places, was looking for an honest roof to shelter him, and a loving heart to lean upon at the last...."
"He would find both here, I know!" said Carolan, gently.
She started and, recalling herself, said in a changed tone:
"Mr. Breagh must excuse my having delayed him here a-talking. To work and bustle is more natural to me!"
He took her hand, and having learned in Germany to pay such pretty homage without looking foolish, he stooped above it and touched it with his lips. She smiled her wise, kind smile, and said with a touching simplicity:
"Mr. Breagh is good enough to honor a poor, hard, working hand!"
He said, and the tone had the ring of sincerity:
"I wish, with all my heart, I were worthier of touching it!"
And so went upstairs to sleep in Mr. Ticking's bed.