“To-night,” she continued, “they taxed me so bekaze I wouldn’t have any thing to say to one of the neighbor’s boys from Coleraine, who know’d us when we were childer; and mother said it was her belafe that Patrick was safe and happy somewhere else, married to some other woman. This made me very mad, and I started up and went out of the house without sayin’ a word; but mother ran after me down the street, and made me kiss her good-night, and we made up and parted friends.” “That was right, Bridget, for she is your mother, and though mistaken, she meant it for the best.” “I know that, Miss Enna, but they trouble me so much, I sometimes hate to go home.” Then she went softly up into her bed-room and brought down a poor, worn-looking letter, and a dilapidated book, with one cover off, and the leaves part gone. “This is his letter from Norfolk town, Miss Enna; read it, plaze, aloud, for I niver tire hearin’ it.” I read it, and found it to be a manly, affectionate, lover-like letter. He touchingly reminded her of her vow, in homely, plain language, it is true, but real heart words were they, that brought tears to my eyes. “What is that book, Bridget?” “Oh, Miss Enna,” replied the girl, looking down, and her round face grew crimson, “it’s a book of his’n. He used to be always readin’ in it; and one day he throw’d it into my lap, and said, when I could read it he’d give me a silk gownd fit for a quane to wear. I laughed and thought nothin’ at all about it until after he’d been gone above a year, when I found it down at mother’s one night in my old chist, which mother had given me when I’d bought her the bureau poor Gracey wanted so bad. I’ve kept the book iver since; and I take it out of my drawer o’ nights, and sit down and try to see somethin’ in it, but even if I could rade, which I can’t, I couldn’t see nothin’ in it, for it always makes me cry.” I took the book from her with great curiosity; I was anxious to see what was the nature of it, for I hoped to judge by it of the character of this sailor-lover. It was Falconer’s Shipwreck. I was satisfied, and was a firmer friend than before to Patrick. A few weeks afterward, one night Bridget came home with a face perfectly radiant, or “_bamin_,” as she would have said. I was reading in my bed-room all alone. She came in, closed Aunt Mary’s door, and giving me a letter, said, “Rade it, dear Miss Enna, rade it; he’s alive, and is comin’ home;” and she sat down on the rug beside me, and laughed and cried at once as I read the letter aloud to her. Sure enough, the lover was safe and true. He had written to her often, but the letters had been lost, he supposed, as he had never heard from her; but he felt sure, he said, that she was still his Bridget, even if he did not hear from her.