“‘I am sure it must be,’ exclaimed Jennie, coming forward and placing her hand on the stranger’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you know me, Alec Morrison?’
“‘O Jennie, I thought you must be married long ago!’ exclaimed the sailor, jumping to his feet, ‘for I could not think that you would have remembered me. And can you care for me now—a battered old hulk as I am, with one arm and half-a-dozen bullets through me, besides I don’t know how many cutlass cuts and wounds from pikes?’
“‘I have never ceased to hope that you would return,’ was Jennie’s answer.
“As his daughter was the only being the old shepherd loved, he allowed her to marry the wounded sailor, who took up his abode with them, and served him faithfully till he died.
“Times went hard with Jennie and her husband, for Morrison’s constitution was shattered, and he could not work as hard as he wished. They had one son, Alec, who grew up a fine manly boy. The sailor was fond of spinning yarns, to which his son listened with rapt attention, and longed to meet with the same adventures as his father.
“The boy was little more than twelve years old when his sailor father died from the wounds he had received fighting his country’s battles.
“Though his thoughts often wandered away over the wide ocean which he had never yet seen, young Alec dutifully did his best to assist his mother, but she did not long survive her husband, and he was left an orphan.
“It would have been a hard matter for him living all alone to have made a livelihood, so he sold two of his heifers to obtain an outfit, and leaving the remainder as well as his cottage in charge of a relative of his father’s, he started off to the nearest seaport. He had no difficulty in finding a ship, for he was as likely a lad as a captain could wish to have on board.
“He sailed away to foreign lands, to the East and West Indies, Australia, and the wide Pacific, and though he may have visited English ports in the meantime, many a long year passed before he again saw the home of his youth.
“He at length came back with a young wife, and some money in his pocket. He had undoubtedly pictured in his imagination his cottage on the wild moor as an earthly paradise, and had described it as such to his wife. When she saw it, she expressed a very different opinion, and complained of the wretched hovel and savage region to which he had brought her. Poor Alec told her with all sincerity that he had believed it to be very different to what he owned it really was. He promised to take her back to the town where her father lived, although in order to support her he must again go to sea. His relation was an honest man and promised to take charge of his property as before, for Alec would not sell it, and leaving his young wife he once more went to sea.