“Ah, you don’t know,” cried Maude, waking out of a happy dream to an instant consciousness of her sorrow,--“you don’t know what has happened: you haven’t heard?” “Of what, dear?” Susan asked, gently, as Maude started up from amongst her pillows feverish and excited. “The loss of the _Kingfisher_--the fire--the dreadful fire! Oh, Susan, you _cannot_ have heard!” Mrs. Tredethlyn said this, because the girl’s face, though it was grave and sad, expressed none of that acute anguish which Susan ought to have felt for her cousin’s untimely fate. She only looked at Maude with a wondering earnestness. “Yes, it was very dreadful,” she said. “Mrs. Clinnock read it in the paper, and told me. I am so sorry for all the sufferers. But oh, Maude, dear cousin, how grateful we ought to be for the accident that saved Francis from such a fate! If he had gone by that vessel, dear----” She stopped suddenly, for Maude looked at her with an unnatural stare, and then fell back unconscious. No, he had not perished with the ill-fated passengers of the _Kingfisher_. Lives as noble, friends as dear, husbands and fathers, brothers and sons, worth and genius, some tribute from all that is brightest upon earth,--had gone down to the deep waters; but Francis Tredethlyn had not made a part in the mighty sacrifice. When Maude recovered from the deadly faintness that had come upon her, Susan showed her a letter which she had received from her cousin,--a letter that had been written in an hotel at Plymouth _after_ the sailing of the _Kingfisher_. It was a kind kinsmanlike letter, stating the arrangements which the writer had made for the comfort and welfare of his cousin and her child; and, in conclusion, Francis told Susan that he had reached Plymouth too late to leave by the _Kingfisher_, a steamer which he had intended to go by, and in which he had taken his berth. Thus left with his time on his hands for some days, he had resolved on going to have a look at the old neighbourhood once more. “It might seem a foolish fancy to many people, but I don’t think it will to you, Susy,” he wrote. “I want to gather a handful of daisies from my mother’s grave before I leave the soil that holds her for ever. I want to stand by the old hearth once more, though God knows what a pain it will be to me to see strangers in the old home. God bless you, dear, and good-bye! I shall not write again till I write from the New World.” This was the close of the letter, which Susan gave Maude to read. Her first feeling on reading it was unbounded gratitude to the Providence that had saved Francis Tredethlyn. Her second feeling was considerable indignation against Francis himself. The mother of the comic song who bewails her missing child in such pathetic numbers, and slaps him soundly when she finds him, is not such a very impossible character.