On the quarter deck Ruys, very pale and white, leaned back in a lounge chair, and Habakkuk stood beside her with a new light in his eyes. They watched the thin scimitar of the new moon gleam out of the sky, and the gray mists creep up the river and enfold the dim and now distant outlines of the forest. They were leaving the country, leaving the East for good. One felt that to other and stronger hands must be left the work so well begun by him; and as for the other, she had gone through the furnace and had come out pure gold. From his post by the man at the wheel Skipper Jack watched the pair. He was a man whom the ordinary cares of the world troubled not, but on the present occasion serious misfortune had assailed him, and he was out of temper. His tobacco had run out, and he had sunk to the degradation of filling his pipe with the half-burned stump of a cheroot. Skipper Jack stood, therefore, hard by the man at the wheel, and, while his keen eyes evermore watched the ship's course, his tongue murmured strange oaths under his beard. But what was that, seen through the gloom, that crinkled up the gnarled features of the skipper into a sour smile of amusement? He saw it again, and in his astonishment almost dropped his favourite clay. "Bust me foolish!" he muttered to himself. "Blowed if the parson ain't a-spooning the missis! Gr-r-r! the old pipe is out!" THE WIDOW LAMPORT But I laye a-wakynge, and loe! ye dawne was breakynge, And rarelye pyped a larke for ye promyse of ye daye: "Uppe and sette yr lance in reste! Uppe and followe on ye queste! Leave ye issue to bee guessed At ye endynge of ye waye "-- As I laye a-wakynge, 'twas soe she seemed to say-- "Whatte and if it alle bee feynynge? There be better thynges than gaynynge, Better pryzes than attaynynge." And 'twas truthe she seemed to saye. Whyles the dawne was breakynge, I rode upon my waye. Q. (_Oxford Magazine_.) THE WIDOW LAMPORT. CHAPTER I. AT THE DOOR OF THE TABERNACLE. When Mrs. Lamport, the pretty widow, was observed standing outside the door of the Methodist meeting-house in Rigaum one Sabbath morning after service, the congregation began to wonder and cast little inquiring looks at each other.