Far away aft, hard by the wheel, stood a man thickly bearded, dressed in dark clothes, his arms folded, and his eyes bent steadfastly upon the passing shore. He was alone; for the rest of the passengers, of whom there were many, were grouped about the break of the poop talking to one another excitedly, or pointing to the houses ashore, or watching the steerage passengers on the main-deck cording their boxes, cramming their clothes into bundles, and making preparations for landing that afternoon. There was something in the expression of this man’s face which would have attracted and detained your attention; a mixture of profound melancholy and struggling surprise, clouded with what might have passed very well for a mood of deep abstraction. His features were thin and haggard, the nose pinched and white, his eyes dark and gleaming, and sunk in hollows, shagged by eyebrows of black hair mingled with white, which met in a perpendicular seam in his forehead. He presented the appearance of one suffering from some incurable constitutional malady which had wasted the flesh off his bones, arched his back, hollowed his chest, and brought into his face a permanent expression of mingled pensiveness and sorrow. A round-faced, brisk, and busy-looking little man happening just then to pop his person out through the companion, stood looking awhile at the shore with eager twinkling eyes, and then, directing his gaze aft, caught sight of our lonely individual and approached him. “Ah, Mr. Hampden! there you are! still puzzling, puzzling, eh?” he exclaimed in a hearty manner. “Come now, you have seen Folkestone, Margate, the Reculvers, eh, now? Confess that those places have helped you to remember all you want to know.” The person addressed as Mr. Hampden, but whom we will continue to call by his proper name of Holdsworth, turned his eyes from the shore and answered with an effort, as though he could not at once break away from his thoughts. “I know all those places well; and there’s not a house yonder, I may say, that doesn’t assure me I am on familiar ground. But they tell me nothing. My past is still a puzzle, doctor, of which these scenes are only fragments. There are many more things to come before I can piece it into a whole.” “What _is_ a cure for a decayed memory? what _ought_ to revive old impressions?” exclaimed the little doctor, hammering a snuff-box with his knuckles. “You’ll never know, Mr. Hampden, how you have weighed upon my mind. I feel, sir, that I have no business to let you quit this ship uncured. And yet, what more than I have done _can_ I do? I have exhausted my imagination in questions.” “Yes, doctor, you have been very kind, and I thank you heartily for the interest you have taken in me.”