I never saw him again. I heard they gave him a shore billet when he was discharged from the hospital; I heard, too, that within a year he was retired on a pension. But that he was dead--I never knew that till you told me to-night. Killorin had come to a full stop. Carlin recalled the last time he had seen Meagher--when they both knew he had not long to live. "She has been a wonderful wife to me. Not much happiness I have had that she has not made for me," Meagher had said. "I don't doubt he told her of my going over the side after him in the gale--he wasn't a man to lie," said Killorin. "He told her," said Carlin. "And he told me something more. That night you passed them on the steps he had proposed to her. He thought she was going to say yes. She had stuck his rose into her hair and was about to say the word--so he thought--and then you came by. And it was six years again before she said the word. If you had not left home----" "Thank God," said Killorin, "I left home! Thank God on her account. The consuming pride--it had to burn itself out in me." It was still dark night, but ahead of the ship a cluster of pale yellow lights could be seen. "Veracruz?" asked Carlin. "Veracruz, yes--the port ahead. And how was she when you saw her last?" "A lonesome woman--more lonesome and weary than a good woman should be at her age. Her eyes are still violet and her cheeks like ivory, but the color doesn't come and go in them now." "I had to leave home to learn," said Killorin, "that the bright color coming and going like a flood means the blood running high in the heart. Men should have a care for such. Such natures feel terribly--either joy or sorrow." It had been night. In a moment the red sun rose up from the oily sea, and it was day. There was a moment of haze and vapor, and then emerged a city ahead--a pink-and-white city, with here and there a touch of cream and blue. "Beautiful!" murmured Carlin. "They're all beautiful," said Killorin, "in the dawn." A faint breeze was stealing over the Gulf. Through the black sea little crests of white were breaking--pure white they were, and a whiff of pure air was coming from them. The sleepers around the deck began to stir, to roll over, to sit up, and, with thankful sighs, to inhale the fresh, sweet air. "The breath o' dawn!" murmured Killorin--"like a breath o' heaven after the hot tropic night.... As you say, that port ahead is beautiful. But when that port is astern and some other one ahead! That will be the sight, man--New York harbor after all these years! The breath and the color o' dawn then--'twill be like a bride's blush and her whisper stealing over the waters o' New York Bay." Peter Stops Ashore