Only one of them lay awake for long that night, watching the clouds drift across the mountain, and, if anyone had put his ear very close to Snap's pillow, he might have heard him mutter, as he tossed in his first restless slumbers, 'Poor little mother! it has almost broken her heart. If we could only win it back! If we could only win it back!' And yet Snap was no kith or kin of the Winthrops, Fairbury was no home of his, nor the gentle lady of whom he dreamed his mother. CHAPTER VII LEAVE LIVERPOOL This tale is written for boys, and if the writer knows anything at all about them they like sunshine as much as he does. That being so, we will skip, if you please, a certain foggy morning in Liverpool, when the heavy sky over the Mersey seemed as full of gloom and rain as men's eyes of tears and sorrow. The great lump in the old Admiral's throat kept getting up into his mouth in a most confusing way, and required a good many glasses of something which he never drank to keep it down. Poor Mrs. Winthrop, strong in a woman's courage to bear suffering, seemed to be thinking for everyone. There was no tear of her shedding on her son's check, and her pretty lips were firm if they were white. 'Don't forget, boys, your father's last written words--'Bring up my boys as Christians and gentlemen,' he wrote. You're out of my keeping now, but, whatever your work, remember you are Winthrops.' And then the last signal to those aboard sounded, and those who had only come to say 'good-bye' hurried off the ship. A party of schoolboys who had come to see a chum leave for the great North-West struck up 'For he's a jolly good fellow' as the steamer left her moorings, and, carried off their balance by the heartiness of the chorus, the Admiral himself and everyone not absolutely buried in pocket-handkerchiefs took up the refrain. The last the boys could remember of England was that busy, dirty pier, a crowd waving adieus, and the dear faces of mother and uncle with a smile on them, in which hope and love had for the moment got the better of sorrow. And then they were out on the broad bosom of old Ocean, with limitless stretches of green waves all round, and all life in front of them. As the ship sped on, the air seemed to grow clearer and more buoyant, the possibilities of the future greater, and success a certainty. Everyone on board seemed full of feverish energy. If they talked of speculations or business they talked in millions, not in sober hundreds, and before they were half across the Atlantic the boys were beginning to almost despise those who stayed behind in slow and sober England--all except Snap, at least, who annoyed them all by his oft-repeated argument, 'If it is so good over there, why do any of these fellows come back?'