“Ella Wetherholm lies beneath.
Hope, if on Me your Hope is placed.”
I felt very sad and grave, but I had no longer an inclination to cry. “She wrote that for herself,” I thought. “I’ll try and hope as she hoped, and perhaps her prayers may lighten, if they do not remove, the heavy curse I brought down on my head.”
With regard to the curse I fancied was following me, I now know that I was entirely mistaken. Our loving Father in Heaven does not curse His creatures, though He permits for their benefit the consequences of sin to fall on their heads.
I will not repeat all the ideas which passed across my mind. I was not nearly so sad as I might have expected. I had met with sympathy and kindness, though from a stranger, and that lightened the burden; and then, though Miss Rundle was an odd creature, I could not help feeling pleased at seeing her again, and hearing from her about my aunt. I had little fear about her marriage, and I had every expectation of finding the sailor she had married, some fine old fellow well worthy of her, even though he had been all his life before the mast. While I was sitting down beside my grandmother’s grave, and thinking of the years that were past, the days of my childhood, and the many strange things which had since occurred to me, every now and then reading over the words on the tombstone: “Hope!—if on me your hope is placed,” and trying to understand their full meaning, and very full I found it, I happened to look up, and then I saw at a little distance a young woman who seemed to have been passing along a path across the churchyard, regarding me attentively. She was dressed in black, which made her look very fair and pale, and certainly I had never seen anybody else in all my life who came up in appearance to what I should fancy an angel in heaven would look like. This is what I thought at the moment. When she saw that she was observed, she drew her shawl instinctively closer around her, and moved on.
Chapter Six.
First introduction to Miss Troall—Happy evening—Return on board—An expedition planned—Attack on privateers—The boat sinks under me—Meet an old friend—Follow his advice—Join an American vessel—Chased again—The action between the British and French ships—Land our passengers—Loss of our vessel—Get on shore at Guernsey—La Motte and his family—Sail for Portsmouth.
And so at length the dream in which I had so long indulged was realised. Once more I trod my native shores. Once more I had visited the home of my childhood. What a blank I had found! My lot has been that of thousands of seamen—of thousands of poor wanderers over the face of the globe, of every rank and in every clime. It is the tale which many and many a shipmate has told me in our midnight watch:—“I got back to the place where I was born. I thought to find it a home, but most of those I left were dead! the rest removed. All were gone. The spot which once I knew so well, knew me no more; so I fell in with an old messmate. We had a jovial spree on shore, and then, when all our cash was gone, we went to sea again.” Such was not my lot, though. Had I been inclined for a spree, which I was not, I had not time to indulge in it. I took a walk through some of the beautiful green lanes about Plymouth, and filled my hat full of wild-flowers, and then came back to the old lady’s house to take my tea, as I had promised. I opened the door without ceremony, for I forgot entirely that it was not my own home, and walked into the parlour, expecting to find the old lady. Instead of her, what was my surprise to see seated at the tea-table the very young woman who had been watching me in the churchyard. I was regularly taken aback, and stammered out—
“Beg pardon, Miss, I didn’t know that there was anybody here but the old lady who asked me to tea.”