Tim thought to himself that this was rather strange, so much complaint as he was accustomed to hear of Adam’s coming so very seldom, and so often as it happened that his mother was particularly busy, and had nothing comfortable about her. He made no answer, however, being convinced that the inquirer below was not Adam. He presently went on,— “Mother, can you spare a minute, just to look out of the window at this person in the court?” There was a something in Tim’s manner that struck her. Instead of throwing down her brush impatiently, as he expected, she came silently, and laid her hand on his, as trembling it grasped the sill. She sank down on a seat after one glance, whispering,— “My boy, it is your father!” If Tim could have seen, he would not have known his father. Instead of the black-skinned, closely-cropped, and somewhat awful-looking person that he remembered his father, Eldred was now a weather-browned, blue-jacketed sailor, with a ringlet hanging duly down either cheek, and a little hat, which set off very favourably his broad, round face, now a little shaded by anxiety, but evidently meant to express a true sailor’s joviality. Few eyes but a wife’s would have recognised him at a first glance. A feeling of pride in him arose as she saw him stand in the doorway; and it tempered the bitter mortification which, in spite of all her professions and self-deception, she felt at being found by him in this place. When her passion of joy and surprise was over, and her spirits began to dance in girlish lightness, her feelings of mortification found vent in a few slight hints of wonder and discontent. Eldred, with his wife beside him, Tim seated at his feet, and in momentary expectation of Effie’s arrival, was disposed to take such hints kindly, though not perhaps with the fidgetty submission which he might have shown in old times. He had not sailed so much about the world for nothing; nor fought so hard against the enemy to be drilled at home, as formerly. It was easy to be a great man to-day, his companions being more disposed to adore his greatness than to find any flaw in it. “Send you money!” said he. “Why, you know very well that if I had had any you would have had it all, as soon as I could send it.” “You do not mean that you have been working all these years for nothing?” “I have got my wages at last; but, besides the hardship of the wages being so much lower than I had been accustomed to on our river, during the war, there was the worse hardship of our not being able to get our dues.” “There would be few seamen in our colliers if such was the practice there.” “And they must go on impressing for the navy as long as it is the practice in any part of it. Poor Cuddie! How I have been turning it in my mind whether he would chance to be at home, or whether he would be gone to London I never fancied his being so far out of reach.” “Father! were you ever flogged? Did you ever try to desert?” inquired Tim.