“‘Samuel is dead,’ they said. ‘He has died the death of a sailor and a gentleman, rest you sure. Be comforted, Dorothy. You loved him well and he loved you, but he is gone. Accept your sorrow and find another mate. He would be the last one to wish you to dwell here alone with your youth going and no child in your house to comfort you. We, his brothers, bid you seek new happiness.’ “And indeed the beautiful Mistress Bings might have had her pick of many gallant gentlemen. But though they sued her ardently, and though she was lonely with a loneliness beyond her words to express, she could not bring herself to be the bride of any one of them. “‘For what,’ said she, ‘if I should wed me, and some day Samuel should come home, looking for me? What if he is eating his heart out now in some dungeon or on some lonely isle, dreaming of me and Pacolet, and I should take the horse and myself to a new master? No, no, I could never sleep quiet in my bed, nor Pacolet in his stall, were we false to him. He trusted us beyond all the world. We will be faithful.’ “So the years rolled by, and at last silver began to come in the golden hair of Mistress Dorothy. But her longing, instead of growing less, increased year by year, so that she did little else but watch the harbor and the wharves, and to every sailor man who came up the street, staggering from his long journey, she called: “‘Pray pardon me, good sir, but have you been overseas? Then perhaps you will tell me if you saw anyway, in any port, a tall man with steel blue eyes, named Samuel Bings.’ “And the sailors, high and low, paid her courtesy, knowing her sad story, and respecting her for her steadfastness, and they would stop, hat in hand below her balcony, and tell her of their voyages, and of what they knew concerning the fate of missing men. But never a one of them, stranger or friend, could bring her word of the man she mourned. “Because of this intercourse she came to know many, many sailors, and since she was one of those whom sorrow teaches, they trusted her and came to her in trouble, and brought her their joys, too. She was the friend to all, and since she had a liberal soul and a well-filled purse, she was enabled to help many a poor man in straits, and to send him on his way with a strengthened heart. “At length, old age came upon her. She leaned upon a stick when she walked, and she must needs be wrapped in the rich shawls brought her from far lands, when she sat upon the galleries. But still her eyes were bright, and they were always seeking, seeking, and her voice was sweet though it quavered as she leaned over her gallery’s edge to question the men who came up from the ships.