The clergymen, relieved of their nautical duties, shone out brightly as good-humored and agreeable companions. Their hardships and their dangers had made them so well acquainted with each other, and with everybody else on board, and they had found it so easy to become acquainted with Captain and Mrs. Horn, and they all felt so much relieved from the load of anxiety which had been lifted from them, that they performed well their parts in making up one of the jolliest companies which ever sailed over the South Atlantic. At Kingston the _Summer Shelter_ and the _Monterey_ were both left,--the former to be completely repaired and brought home by Mr. Portman, and the other to be coaled and sent back to Vera Cruz, with her officers and her crew,--and our whole party, including Captain Hagar, sailed in the next mail steamer for New York. CHAPTER XXXIV PLAINTON, MAINE It was late in the summer, and Mrs. Cliff dwelt happy and serene in her native town of Plainton, Maine. She had been there during the whole warm season, for Plainton was a place to which people came to be cool and comfortable in summer-time, and if she left her home at all, it would not be in the months of foliage and flowers. It might well be believed by any one who would look out of one of the tall windows of her drawing-room that Mrs. Cliff did not need to leave home for the mere sake of rural beauty. On the other side of the street, where once stretched a block of poor little houses and shops, now lay a beautiful park, The Grove of the Incas. The zeal of Mr. Burke and the money of Mrs. Cliff had had a powerful influence upon the minds of the contractors and landscape-gardeners who had this great work in hand, and the park, which really covered a very large space in the village, now appeared from certain points of view to extend for miles, so artfully had been arranged its masses of obstructing foliage, and its open vistas of uninterrupted view. The surface of the ground, which had been a little rolling, had been made more unequal and diversified, and over all the little hills and dells, and upon the wide, smooth stretches there was a covering of bright green turf. It had been a season of genial rains, and there had been a special corps of workmen to attend to the grass of the new park.