On the 22nd July, 1814, we anchored at Spithead, the sailors cheering us and manning the yards as we went ashore. As soon, however, as we landed at our destination, he requested of me to assist him in his search. After tramping up and down and around Portsmouth, in vain, we at last made a stand in High Street—indeed he was growing almost desperate with disappointment—and here he made random inquiries of every person he met. This eventually drew a crowd of women of all ages about him but not one could answer his inquiry. He was on the point of giving it up altogether, when an old woman on crutches, from the rear of the crowd, casting a very shrewd keen look at him, asked him to repeat the name, “Mary S——n,” shouted my friend. “Ah!” exclaimed the hag, rather musingly, “if you will just inquire at No.—, near the Post-office, at the back of the street, you will, I think, find the party you require,” casting up her eye as she finished her directions. Away we hurried, some five or six women straggling after us, and in a few minutes found ourselves at the door of a small neat-built cottage. After knocking—every moment seemed an hour to my poor friend, until the door was opened—a pretty-looking little girl, of about ten years of age, inquired his errand. “Does Mrs. S——n,” asked the sergeant, and paused to look at the child, “does Mary S——n live here?” “Yes,” said the little girl, starting with surprise, “that’s my name.” “Right,” exclaimed the sergeant, clasping the astonished little one in his arms, and dashing into a side room well sprinkled with children. “Where, where’s your mother?” The words were scarcely uttered, than a shrill shriek was heard from the inner apartment, and at the same moment the mother rushed before us, and gazing on him fell instantly into a fit of hysterics. My poor friend looked perplexed; his features alternately changing from doubts to fears, with uncertain satisfaction. The little one was in an instant out of the house, and returned in a short time, leading in a square, well-made, good-looking man, in appearance a carpenter. The facts were stubbornly plain to every one. The children, the comfortable, respectable air of the place, were too plain; and the two husbands now stood within range of each other, with nostrils dilated in agony, and hands clenched, awaiting an expected onset. I think I never saw two better models of manhood in its prime, wrought up to melancholy and indescribable excitement. The two men, as it were, dug their eyes into each other, and then on the shrieking woman, who in recovering a little clung, as if for refuge, to the carpenter.