Beckey took no notice, but catching Luke round the neck, to Amy's great horror, for she thought now she was gone "utick" in reality, she began kissing him, and then she laughed and said, "Amy, woman, it is Luke—my own lad Luke. Oh! where were my eyes?"—Beckey always talked of seeing, though she could not see—"where were my ears? But I reckon it's because my own Luke has now gotten his man's voice and his man's look, and he had only his lad's voice and his lad's look when he went. Black is his hair, says thou, Amy? and it was as light and shiney as tow when he was a lad. But so was his father's. When he began to tell me about Sally Flamstead, all at once I heard his father speaking and himself speaking, and my heart went with a great jump, and I knew it all. Ay, I'm blind and deaf too, or I should ha' fun' that out before this. Luke, lad! Luke, it is thee; thou wunna deny it?"
"No, dear granny," said Luke, using the old familiar term, "I won't deny it; I am your own Luke, and I am come to live near you while you are left to us."
"And yet, Luke," said the trembling old grandmother, "thou went away and left us to think thou was dead, drowned, murdered; and all these years, thou has neither written nor asked after me."
"Oh, granny," said Luke, "that's been a bitter thing to me. I was forced to run away, for I saw that those Wellands would never cease till they had made an end of me. I went right off, and begged till I found myself at Hull. There a ship captain met me in the street, and eyeing me awhile, he said, 'For shame, young scamp, to go about begging, a clever-looking, active lad like you. Come, I'll take you with me to sea. Eh? what say you?' I thanked him heartily, for of all things I was delighted to go to sea, where I expected to find some Robinson Crusoe's island, or the like fine country, such as Sally Flamstead had told me of. He took me on board a great ship, and there I was stripped and tumbled into a great tub of water, and well washed, and my old rags were flung overboard, and I was togged out in a sailor's suit, and set to work to sweep out the cabin and swab the deck, and do all that kind of thing, with two or three lads of my own age. In a short time we set sail for the Cape of Good Hope; but before I went I told the captain that I wanted my grandad and grandmam to know where I was, and I begged him earnestly to write for me, and he said he would; but one day he called me into the cabin, and said, 'I have seen a gentleman here from Derby, who has come to buy whale oil to light his factory with, and he says, 'That young fellow's history is known all over our part of the country. Look to it, captain, for he is the very imp of mischief, and had to run away for trying to kill a collier down a pit with a brick, and when he was missing the collier was charged with having murdered him, and he's transported for it, and his wife too. I heard him tried at Derby Assizes, and the young rogue's grandfather and grandmother are both dead of grief.'
"When the captain told me this I was ready to sink on the floor. Nobody can tell how I felt. To think I had killed both my grandfather and grandmother by my foolishness! As for Welland and his giant wife, I was glad that they were transported, for they seemed to me to be so malicious, and to have caused your deaths. At first I was stunned, and then I burst out crying, and I thought my heart would break. I had killed my only friends in the world; I was a wretch without a relative or soul on earth that cared for me.
"'Don't stand blubbering there,' said the captain, 'but go and show yourself handy, and turn out a farrently fellow. You may if you will; and if not, there's a rope-end and the yard-arm for you. Quick! make yourself scarce!' That was a bitter voyage for me. I suffered dreadfully from sickness and from cold in the southern latitudes; and I got plenty of kicks and cuffs from the mates and the sailors, and plenty of dousing and sousing with salt water that came sweeping over the ship's sides, and with hail and rain as we had to turn out of our hammocks at night when storms were raging, and we had to go up into the shrouds, and out along the slippering, reeling yards, hanging over the dark, boiling, roaring seas below. Oh! I often thought of these pleasant fields and farms, and all my old favourite nooks in the woods and dells, at those times, and I was often tempted just to drop off the yard-end, and bury all my troubles in the raging ocean. But I got better of that; the captain began to notice me for an active, and, as he said, clever fellow, and I began to like the sea. I've told you, granny, of some of my wanderings in India, and America, and Australia, and we can talk these over at our leisure now."
"But," said Beckey, "what made thee think of coming here if thou thought us dead?'
"I thought I'd come and see your graves, dear granny. That was all I could do; and I thought I'd put a handsome stone at your heads, such as I used to see, when I was a lad, in Monnycrofts churchyard, with a nice verse at the bottom, and a golden angel at the top, with a long golden trumpet blowing for the resurrection. But when I got to Mrs. Widdiwicket's, and began to ask about the old people that used to be here in my time, just in a roundabout way, that I might not be known by asking about you too soon, I really thought all the people in the place were dead. Old Squire Flaggimore and Madame Flaggimore, and old Parson Simion and Mrs. Simion, and old Johnson, and Broadbent, and Cullycamp the mole-catcher, and Shears the tailor, and Kettlebender the cobbler, and such a tribe,—all gone! And the Barnicotts of the Reckoning House, I said, are, of course, gone too. But what a start went through me when the landlady said, 'Nay, poor old Luke died directly after the affair about his grandson, which is a long story, but the old grandmother is living still.'
"Living still!" said I, starting up so that the landlady gave a jump, and then she looked at me with such a look.
"'You seem acquainted, sir,' she said, 'with these parts;' and she continued looking at me, as much as to say, Who in the world are you?