John Stevens, who had partially recovered from his seasickness, went into the cabin with the stranger. He had formed no acquaintances since coming on board the vessel and was strangely impressed with this old gentleman. Men cannot always brood on the past and retain their senses. John Stevens was not a coward, yet the helpless condition of his wife and children made him dread danger. When they were seated he said: "You do not belong at Jamestown." "No. I am from London and know no one at Jamestown." "You came in the last ship?" "We did." "You did not come alone?" "No; my daughter Blanche came with me. She is all the child I have." John Stevens remembered to have seen a very pretty girl on the streets of Jamestown, and for having praised her beauty, his wife had grown insanely jealous and given way to one of her outbursts of anger. The gentleman from London was Mr. Samuel Holmes, who had been a too warm friend of Charles I. to suit the Protectorate, and after Cromwellism had become a certainty, he considered it better to fly the country. As Virginia had been friendly to cavaliers, he had brought his daughter to Jamestown and spent six months there; but, being assured by friends that he could return with safety, he had decided to go home. From that time John Stevens and Mr. Holmes became friends. In a day or two more the passengers had nearly all recovered from their seasickness, and the voyage promised to be a favorable one. John Stevens met Blanche Holmes, a pretty blue-eyed English girl, with light brown hair and ruddy cheeks. She was not over eighteen years of age, and was one of those trusting, confiding creatures, who win friends at first sight. By the strange, fortuitous circumstances which fate seems to indiscriminately weave about people, the maid and John Stevens were thrown much into each other's society. She had many questions to ask about the New World. He, having passed all his life there and having explored the coast to Massachusetts and fought many battles with the Indians, was able to entertain her, and she never seemed to tire of listening to his adventures. It never occurred to John that there could be any impropriety in talking to this child, nor was there any, though modern society might condemn him. He never mentioned his family to either Blanche or her father. That wife and children left at Jamestown were subjects too sacred for general conversation. When alone in his stateroom he knelt and breathed a prayer for them, and often in his dreams he heard his laughing boy at play, or felt the warm, soft hand of his baby on his cheek, or heard her sweet voice calling him. Often he awoke and sobbed like a child on discovering that the ship was hourly bearing him further and further from home. Mr. Holmes was a cheerful companion at first, but gradually he grew melancholy, and at times inapproachable. One day John met him at the gangway, and he took the young man's arm and, leading him aft, said: