"Walter Marshall,—my boy,—Ellen’s and mine," and over the boy, which was Ellen’s and his, the man, old before his time, bent down and wept great teardrops, which fell upon the white handsome face, which grew each moment more and more like the young girl wife, whose grave the broken-hearted husband had never looked upon. "Why do you cry?" asked Walter, and the captain replied: "I had a son once like you, and it makes me cry to see you here so sick. I am going to take care of you, too, and send that woman off." "Oh! will you?" was Walter’s joyful cry, "and will you stay until I find my father?" "Yes, yes, I will stay with you always," and again Seth Marshall’s lips touched those of his son. "Isn’t it funny for men to kiss men?" Walter asked, passing his hand over the spot. "I thought they only kissed women, girls like Jessie, and I don’t kiss her now. I haven’t since she was a little thing and gave me one of her curls. It’s in my trunk, with a lock of mother’s hair. Did you know _mother_, man?" "Yes, yes, oh, Heaven, yes," and the man thus questioned fell upon his knees, and hiding his face in the bed-clothes, sobbed aloud. His grief distressed Walter, who, without understanding it clearly, felt that he was himself in some way connected with it, and laying his hand upon the gray hair within his reach, he smoothed it caressingly, saying: "Don’t cry. It won’t do any good. I used to cry when I was a boy and thought of poor, dear father." "Say it again. Say, ’poor, dear father,’ once more," and the white, haggard face lifted itself slowly up and crept on until it lay beside the feverish one upon the pillow. Thus it was the father met his son, and all through the afternoon he sat by him, soothing him to sleep, and then bending fondly over him to watch him while he slept. "He is some like Ellen," he whispered, "but more like me, as I was in my early manhood, and yet, as he lies sleeping, there is a look about him that I have often seen on Ellen’s face when she was asleep. Darling wife, we little thought when we talked together of our child, that the first time I beheld him would be beneath the California skies, and he a bearded man." Then, as he remembered what Walter had said of the hair, he opened the lid of the trunk, and hunted until he found Jessie’s raven curl, and the longer, browner tress. He knew in a moment that it was Ellen’s hair,—and kissing it reverently he twined it about his fingers just as he used to when the soft eyes it shaded looked lovingly into his. "Walter’s is like it," he said, stealing to the bedside, and laying it among the brown locks of his son. "Bless my boy,—bless my boy!" and going back again, he placed the lock of hair beside this jet black ringlet wondering who Jessie was, and why she had married another.