So closes that dawn of the new year on this sorrowing household. Alas, how strange the contrast! A year ago, all, masters and servants, with fervour and enthusiasm, and with heartfelt prayers, wished a “Good, a happy New Year to Halbert” far away; but there is none of that now, Halbert’s first year has been a year of trial, mental struggle, and failure so far, and though the same deep love--or even deeper, for these loving hearts cling even more closely to him now, in his time of distress and despair--animates them still, they dare not wish each other, far less openly propose for him, the “happy new year” so usual. Poor household, it may be rich in world’s gear, and world’s comforts, but the chaplet has lost a rose, and he, so precious to them all, is lost to their ken, vanished from their sight, as it were, and all the remembrance of him that remains is that of a “broken man.” But where is Halbert? Away, in a struggling ship, tossing on the stormy bosom of the wide Atlantic, alone upon the storm-swept deck, whence everything, not fastened with wood and iron, has been driven by these wintry seas; boats, bulwarks, deck load and lumber, are all gone into the raging deep, and yet he stands on the deck, drenched by every sea, watching the giant billows, before which all but he are trembling, uncovered, while the lightning gleams athwart the seething waters, and the thunder peals out in incessant volleys overhead; unsheltered, while the big raindrops pour down in torrents from the heavy cloud-laden sky. There is no rest for him; in vain does he stretch himself in his uneasy cot; in vain forces the hot eyelid to close upon the tearless eye; since he wrote Christian, all weeping and tears have been denied him. Sleep, which comes in healing quietness to all his shipmates, does not visit him; or, if for a moment wrapped in restless slumbers, dreams of fearful import rise up before him, far surpassing in their dread imagery the gloomiest and most horrible conceptions of his waking thoughts or fancy, too horrible to bear; and the wretched dreamer starts out into the dreary air, thinking himself a veritable Jonah, to whom this tempest and these stormy seas are sent as plagues, and he stands a fit spectator of that external elemental warfare, which is but a type and emblem, fierce though it be, of the raging war within.