Sleep well, Joseffa, in your mystic entombment! It was a long tryste which we gave each other. When we parted we agreed to meet again in Spain, and there, being married, you would have sailed with me to see that Scotland of which we so often spoke. Man proposes—God disposes. It was not to be so. Although years had gone by, and I knew well that the ship which bore you had perished, still I kept the tryste at Alicant. I stood upon the sea-stretching quay upon the day and the hour we had covenanted. I kept the tryste as though it were a duty of my faith; it was soothing to my spirit to do so: but not even a shadowy phantom of my beloved flitted to my side. There were loud voices and busy throngs around. It is in the silence and the dusk of evening and of dawn that best we seem to see each other. And even these moments, what are they?—Times of musing, idle phantasy. People laugh at them and at me, and, perhaps, with reason. Who, indeed, would believe, seeing the grizzled locks and weather-beaten visage and horny hands of the man who is now captain of the Scotch brig ‘Royal Thistle,’ why so called we know well—that he, that jolly yarn-telling mariner—that tough old tangled lump of sea-weed—can yet remember the day when the flush of loving blood was hot within him? Who will credit that that pair of oozy, blinking eyes can yet see, as it were, looking into them bright and loving human orbs, long ago turned into pearls beneath the deep waters; and, finally, who will conceive that that square-built, stout-paunched veteran of the ocean was once a slim youth, with flowing love-locks, whom the voice of beauty thrilled, whose tears, the well-remembered tones of that voice will still provoke to flow? I have here shot a-head in my story, and anticipated other things. Were I, however, to have persevered in narrating, point by point, the adventures of my Buccaneer life, I should, perhaps, have left the tale of my early love but half told. I have, therefore, thought it better at once to make an end with that sad history. In a few words—Joseffa and I were betrothed, and her mother blessed us. Marriage then was impossible, for further claims against the father were every day arising, and when all were finally adjusted, the mother and daughter would be nearly as poor as myself. At length, all such matters being settled, they sailed for Spain, as I have narrated. Long before that time, however, I had quitted Carthagena, after solemnly engaging to meet my betrothed in three years at the city of her family, at Alicant.