Jack’s pockets were full of prize money. It burnt them sadly. What should he do with it? He bethought him that, before it was all gone, he would go down to his native village. He remembered the quiet churchyard, with its yew trees, its white headstones, and its lowly green mounds, where lay the only being he had ever learned to love—his mother. He fancied that he should meet some old friends, some one who knew her and him in his childhood. So the gallant hardy sailor set off, with his bundle at the end of a stout stick over his shoulder, and his pockets amply stored with money, towards his native village. He could not reach the place on the night he had expected, so he slept at an inn a little distance off, and it was noon before he entered it. The steeple of the church guided him to the spot he sought. Changed was the village, changed was everything around. The cottages seemed more humble, the scenery on a smaller scale. He at once bent his steps to the churchyard. Round and round it he wandered. He could not determine the spot he looked for. At last he stopped in a remote corner, where the rank herbage and tall weeds almost concealed the closely-packed rows of long low mounds. No foot or headstones were there, but a piece of the wall had fallen, and lay where it fell with grass growing thickly around. He sat himself down on it, and rested his head on his hands. A tear, the first he had shed for many a year, escaped through his fingers.
“Alas, mother, mother, how comfortable I could have made you now had you lived!” he thought, as he remembered the poverty and privations his parent had endured. “I have not forgotten your words, the lessons you gave me. I should not have been ashamed to meet you. Yes, you hear me, mother, but not from down there,” and he unconsciously pointed to the lowly graves. “No, you are above—in Heaven, mother dear, and happy.” He raised his hand and looked up into the blue bright sky beyond the yew tree, that fit emblem of mourning and sorrow, contrasting with the glories of the firmament spread out above it, to which the Christian believer looks with hope and joy as his abode for eternity.
Jack sat a while, then rose and went into the village. He wandered about looking into the faces of the people he met, but not a countenance could he remember. He recollected the names of a few. He inquired for them at the bar of the public house. Nearly all were dead or scattered.
“You be from these parts, master, I s’pose?” said an old man who sat in the bar eyeing him keenly. “I’d a son once who went away to sea. He never came back. They told me he was killed by the enemy. May be you knew him, he’d be about your age and size, I’m thinking.”
“What was his name?” asked Jack.
The old man told him, and seemed sadly grieved when Jack had to say he had never met him.
Resolved not to give up his search for some old acquaintance, Jack shouldered his stick and bundle, and wandered along past the spot where his mother’s cottage had stood. It was on a piece of common. Though it had fallen down, and most of the materials had been removed, he recognised the outlines of the little bit of garden which had surrounded it. Not far off was another cottage. An old woman stood at the door.
“Are you looking for anything, young man?” she asked, after watching him for a time. He felt almost inclined to give her an embrace. The voice, and expression, and figure he recognised as that of a neighbour.
“Are you not Dame Hughes?” he asked eagerly.
She nodded.