Ere the vessel sailed Derval felt, but for the last time, the colt of Mr. Paul Bitts, who called him "the lazy scum of a fish-pond," and who delighted in malignant cruelty and the torture of his own species, and highly resented the circumstance of the lad being a little absorbed in a letter from home, brought by the mail steamer. His father had heard of his safety, through the owners, Curry & Co., and no doubt the fright he had received caused him to reproach himself, for a time--but a time only--with his coldness and neglect of his firstborn, and lack of that affection which latterly he had denied him and bestowed entirely on the other son; and poor Derval's honest heart grew very, very full indeed, as he read and re-read the lines his father's hand had traced, and which he valued more than the twenty-pound note he enclosed to him, and which could not be of much use while on the waters of the Southern Sea. Fortunately he had been well grounded in Euclid and algebra, by the kind tutelage of Mr. Asperges Laud, to whom his thoughts ever went home gratefully; and in the knowledge of his profession he made rapid progress under Joe Grummet, a tutor of a very different kind; while his mind, as active as his body, required and delighted in scientific research. He became a prime favourite with the seamen, knew and understood their characters, and was all the more in favour that he quickly knew the whole parts of the ship from stem to stern, and could act by turns cooper and carpenter, sailmaker and ropemaker, so clever was his head and so skilful was he with his hands. CHAPTER V. AFTER LONG YEARS. Four years have elapsed since we last saw Derval, and since then the _Amethyst_ had been freighted to so many parts of the world, that he had seen a vast deal of it and won much skill and experience, but had never once been near his home. Great were the changes which time and circumstances had effected there. From the hour Greville Hampton began to speculate, it seemed as if everything he touched turned to gold. He had bought and sold, sold and bought, and speculated, till he was becoming one of the richest men in Devonshire or Cornwall, and all this growing good fortune he somehow insensibly connected with his second marriage, and poor Mary was as completely forgotten, apparently, as if she had never existed. His success was great; it astonished himself and others too; and, after the fashion of the toadying world, he was greatly looked up by many who, at one period of his life, knew him not. The last of the humble cob-cottages had disappeared, and with it the last of the aboriginal inhabitants of Finglecombe; the villa residences of Bayview Terrace were in great request, and a handsome sea-wall, called the Grand Promenade, occupied the shingly shore on which the ocean had freely rolled for ages.