At length one evening when the moon was bright, Miss Conyers, instead of going down into her cabin, sat in the stern enjoying the beauty of the night; and presently feeling chilly, she told Judith to go to her stateroom and fetch a shawl. The girl started to obey; but the next minute uttered a terrific shriek. Miss Conyers sprang to her feet; and there, not three yards from her, stood Judith, struck, statue-still, with terror, gazing upon—what? A figure just as she had described the apparition to be—thin as a skeleton, pale as a spectre; and if not as tall as the mainmast, certainly looking preternaturally tall from being so preternaturally lean; his head was bound up in a white cloth, his foot tied up in a rag, his arm in a sling, and himself leaning on a crutch;—the ghost of that Foretop Tom who had been drowned more than two years ago. An icy chill of superstitious horror, that all her will and intellect could not prevent, shot through the veins of Britomarte Conyers. But the next instant she had governed this feeling; and saying to herself, “I will find out what this means,” she walked straight up to the figure and laid her hand on its shoulder. CHAPTER XL. HOMEWARD. “Who are you, man?” inquired Miss Conyers, looking in the face of the mysterious stranger. “Me? Ou, I’m just naebody!” answered the apparition, rather sulkily. “What is your name?” “Just Tam McAlpine.” “Foretop Tom!” “Ay, just himsel’.” Miss Conyers sank down upon a coil of ropes, and drew the trembling Irish girl to her side, and then said: “You have surprised me very much, and you have terrified this girl nearly out of her senses, but I am glad to know that you were saved from the wreck;” then turning to her agitated companion, she said, “Judith, you see it is Tom himself. Why don’t you speak to him?” “Sure I see it now. And I’ll spake whin I’m able. I can’t yit!” sobbed Judith, covering her face with her apron, and rocking herself to and fro. “Ay, that will be the way she has treated me ever sin’ I foregathered wi’ her on the deck. Screeching and rinning fra me as if I had been Auld Nick!” complained the Scotchman. “No wonder. We all thought that you were drowned more than two years ago. And she took you for your own ghost. How were you saved?” “E’en by a miracle—nae less. When the boat capsized I laid hold of an empty cask, and whilk buoyed me up all night until the tide turned, when I was floated far out to sea. I gave mysel’ up for lost, but held on to the cask till my strength was weel nigh spent. At length I was seen and picked up by the ither lifeboat, whilk had been beating about all that time. Three days after, when our bread and water was nearly gane, our boat was picked up by an outward bound Dutch merchantman, and we were saved.” “An almost miraculous preservation, indeed. You must have been astonished to see Judith here. Our preservation was quite as strange as your own.”