Did Mother feel that the best of their voyaging was over? When Father returned to the ship that night, he had a letter “containing sad news from Freeman,” their lad who had thought to conquer the dread white plague by the hardships of a seaman’s life, and who was ill at Valencia. But Mother was not one to spend the long weeks of their return voyage to Melbourne in useless repining, and her Diary shows her alert, as ever, to “see what there was to see.” They made slow progress out to sea, as the weather was hot and calm. “It is very tedious to be lying here, although we have company near us. To-day we saw what we supposed to be the Ghats Mountains on the eastern coast of Hindustan.” And steadily, week after week, they nosed their way southward again, and on October 26 she could write: “It has been really cold this week, about like the weather at home this season. I sit up on deck all the morning, and have been very busy this week turning my silk dress.” It was rough weather the last leg of their journey, “the ship rolled terribly”; and Mother was none too good a sailor. When they hove to at Port Philip Light to take on the pilot, they received orders to proceed to Sydney to discharge their cargo. And there was a letter from his captain, one of their old neighbors at home, confirming their worst fears in regard to Freeman. He had died at Valencia, and was buried there, even as Mother had been praying that another year might see them all united at the old home. There was no time to be spent in idle lamentation, and as Father must go to Melbourne, so would she go also to be near him. They landed, rode by stage twenty miles to Geelong through “a very dreary country,” thence by railway to Melbourne where they were disappointed not to find letters from home at the consul’s, nor was their friend Mr. Osborn to be found that day; but they breakfasted with him the next morning, when Father accomplished his business, and by afternoon they were on the wearisome journey back to Geelong and Queen’s Cliff where the ship was moored. Indomitable Mother writes: “It was a beautiful morning and I enjoyed the ride.” She had learned the subtlest use of life: to miss none of its beauty, though the heart were breaking. That night, before they sailed for Sydney, she wrote the two forlorn children at home—a long letter, with the high heart of courage, knowing that it might be months before they should receive it and the first sting of their sorrow be past: a letter full of Christian resignation and of comfort.