Harry thought he recognised the countenance of the speaker. Assisted up gallantly by the quartermaster stationed at the gangway, the young woman stood on the deck. She looked round with a somewhat scared and astonished gaze, but no sooner did her eye fall on Harry, who was watching her, than she ran towards him. "Oh! Mr. Tryon, is it you, indeed? Can you tell me if Jacob Tuttle is on board? He came away without telling me that he was again going to join his ship, and I only heard just now from a friend of his at Portsmouth that he was on board the `Brilliant.' He would never wish, I know, to go and leave me without one farewell, and so I cannot make it out." Harry recognised in the speaker Mary Cull, Mabel's trim little waiting-maid. Jacob was aloft at the time, engaged in some work on the maintop-gallant yard. He had been too busily occupied to see the different boats coming to the ship. Now, however, the task completed, he happened to cast his eyes down on deck, and even at that distance recognised the figure though he could not have seen the pretty features of Mary. He observed, however, that she was talking to Harry. The knife he was using, which hung round his neck by a rope yarn, was thrust into the breast of his shirt, and quick as lightning he came gliding down the backstay close to where the two were standing. Mary gave a shriek of terror when she saw him, thinking that he was falling. Before even she could utter another exclamation of alarm, he sprang nimbly on deck and stood by her side. "Mary," he said, "have you come to look for me? I would not have come away without wishing you good-bye if I had thought I was not going to be back again pretty soon, but I was pressed aboard this ship, and had no chance of going back to see you and mother. You know I am a poor hand at writing, and I could not ask my friend here to trouble himself about the matter, and so, Mary, that's the long and the short of it. I love you, girl, that I do, and love you now more than I ever thought I would; but, Mary, I did not think you cared for me, that's the truth on't, and now I know you do," and Jacob took Mary's willing hand in his, and looked into her eyes with an honest glance which must have convinced her that he spoke the truth, whatever he might before have done. "Jacob, I did not tell you I loved you before, because you did not ask me, but still I thought you knew I did, and as for Tom Hodson you was jealous of, I never cared a pin for him, and he's gone and 'listed for a soldier." Harry listened to this conversation not unamused. He understood the whole history in a minute. Jacob had left home in a huff, jealous of the attentions Mary was receiving from a rival, and now he was going away, to be parted from her for many years, perhaps never to return. He could not help comparing Jacob's position to his own. Poor Mary was in tears. Jacob was vowing with earnestness that he would from henceforth ever be faithful to her.