‘I always said the captain was a holy spirit,’ said Terrence, ‘so he was, and no man, after all. Sure hadn’t he done the job he came for, and what’s the use of his staying any longer? Though he might have jist given me a grip of the hand, and said good-bye to ye, Terrence Moony, my boy. Yes, it’s all clear to my mind that he came straight from hiven to help me to bury the old woman, and to liberate the Americans.’ ‘He was quite a _gentlemanly spirit_, Terence, wasn’t he?’ asked the Englishman to whom the above was addressed, and who had learned the secret by accident with regard to Fanny, but was bound by an oath to secrecy. ‘Look here, friend,’ said Terrence, clapping him on the shoulder, and looking round slyly to see if he was overheard by any one else, ‘I believe that spirit has gone into Mr. Lovell’s wife, for she’s so beautiful that it does my eyes good to look at her, and it so reminds me too, of the kindness and everything else about Captain Channing, as he was called, that divil take me if I didn’t find myself crying one day, when she was giving me gruel, when I was sick of this little scratch on the hip, and laying in that little chamber yonder.’ ‘It was a pretty severe wound, Terence, and you bore it like a man, and no mistake,’ said his friend, the Englishman. ‘I have seen older men flinch under smaller ones and far less painful.’ ‘Thank ye, though it was your friends that give it to me,’ said the Irishman. ‘Twas a pretty good job all round for us, aich man got two hundred dollars prize-money, saying nothing of the presents. To-morrow we all iv us ship again in the brig with a dozen to back us. Mrs. Lovell is going to stay with her husband, and I go as a sort of quarter-master, you know. Sure there can’t any harm come to the brig while that swate lady of the Captain’s aboord.’ ‘I should hope not,’ said the Englishman, turning away thoughtfully. ‘Oh, there’s no hope aboot it, it’s sure,’ said Terrence. We may state here that the Englishman reached his home and family within the twelve months. Thus it was, and the good brig Constance, now the ‘Fanny,’ (so had Lovell named her in honor of his wife,) was refitted and fully manned, and Lovell was her captain. Fanny, by her own solicitations, was permitted to accompany him, and she was not only his companion, but counsellor also, in many a hard-fought contest. The Fanny took several valuable prizes, and fortunately escaped herself without any serious damage. Thus at the time of the declaration of peace, the value of the prizes taken, and the money judiciously invested, afforded a handsome competency, upon which Lovell and his noble wife retired for a while to enjoy the sweets of domestic happiness. CHAPTER IX.