'Indeed, then, we shall be very sorry to part with it. It is the dearest little thing in the world. I should cry my eyes out if it were taken from us, I do believe. The sweet little pet! And it is so wonderfully pretty. No doubt of its gentle birth, poor little waif! To think it has not a relation in the world!' 'And the name of the ship was?' 'We saw the ship's name in the _Witness_ the following week. 'The Maid of Cashmere,' was it not, Roddie?' Roderick nodded. 'That,' said Kenneth, 'was the name of the ship in which my poor friend Jack Steele lost his wife. He is Major in the Dourgapore Light Cavalry, and they are not two years married yet. They were both to have come home in her, but a week before sailing his leave was cancelled, owing to a threatened rising in the Mahratta country. His wife was ordered home by the doctors, who said her only chance of life was the sea voyage, so she sailed alone with a child only a week or two old, I believe, and the nurse. Poor things! both were lost. After making the voyage round the Cape in safety, to be lost upon the Scotch coast, within a few hours of home! Was it not sad? The Mahratta alarm died out as fast as it arose; and six weeks after Mrs. Steele had sailed, Jack was able to set out himself. He knew nothing of the disaster till he reached his father's house in Edinburgh, and you may suppose what a shock it was to him. He arrived at home just three weeks after his wife's funeral. His, you see, had been a quick passage, while the ship his wife sailed in was considerably overdue before the wreck occurred. Poor fellow! when he asked for his wife and child, and why they had not come to meet him, you may suppose how terrible it was; they had nothing to show him but his wife's grave, and the shock nearly killed him. He was in bed for three weeks after it, and is only able to creep about now. The old judge took to his bed after his daughter-in-law's funeral, so you may suppose the dismal house it was. Jack is an only child, and the old man had set his heart on having a grandchild, and he was cut up in a way you would not think possible, if you had ever seen the hard grim way he has of dealing out justice to offenders. It appears that the child was not born till a fortnight before Mrs. Steele sailed, and that the letter announcing that Jack and his wife were going home was posted before its birth; and so the old people did not know they had a grandchild till Jack's letters, written after his wife had sailed, reached them. They did not know of its existence, in fact, till after they were assured of its death, but the poor old lady cries and laments, I am told, over this--I must call it an imaginary bereavement (for she had never seen or even heard of the little thing till after its death) as bitterly as if it were a child of her own she had lost. The body of this child, too, has never been found; and they say it has been a great aggravation of poor Jack's grief, to think what may have become of it.