Just then Gretchen, buxom, and smiling also, appeared bearing a huge back-log in her arms. And when I saw the way my companion sprang up and rushed to meet and relieve her of the burden, and heard the guttural whispering that took place before the lump of timber reached its destination, I thought that, ere very long, all doubts would be dissipated, and that, even then, I sat within measurable distance of the future Mrs Ward. A CAPE HORN CHRISTMAS. All hands in Yamba hut had turned in, except a couple at the end of the long rough table. These late birds were playing euchre by the flickering light of an evil-smelling slush lamp. The cook had banked up the fire for the night, but the myall ashes still glowed redly and cast heat around. On the stone hearth stewed a bucket of tea. But for the snores of the men in the double tier of bunks ranged ship-fashion along both sides of the big hut, the frizzling of the grease in the lamp, and the muttered exclamations of the players, everything was very quiet. ‘Pass me!’ ‘Make it!’ ‘Hearts!’ And both men dropped their hands and sprang up in affright as a wild scream rang out from the bunk just above them. As they gazed, a white face, wet with the sweat of fear, poked out and stared down upon them with eyes in which the late terror still lived. ‘What the dickens is up?’ asked one, recovering from his surprise, whilst the grumbles of awakened sleepers travelled around the hut. ‘My God! what a dream! what a dream!’ exclaimed the man addressed, sticking out a pair of naked legs, and softly alighting on the earthen floor, and standing there trembling. ‘Shoo!’ said the station wit, as he turned for a fresh start; ‘it’s only Jack the Sailor had the night-horse.’ But the man, crouching close to the players, and wiping his pallid face with his loose shirt sleeve, still exclaimed,— ‘What a dream! My God! What a dream!’ ‘Tell us what it were all about, Jack,’ asked one of the others, handing him a pannikin of tea. ‘It oughter been bad, judgin’ by the dashed skreek as you give.’ ‘It was,’ said the other—a grizzled, tanned, elderly man—as he warmed his legs, and looked rather ashamed of himself. ‘But hardly enough to make such a row over as you chaps reckons I did. I was dreamin’,’ he continued, speaking slowly, ‘as I was at sea again. It was on Christmas Day, an’ the ship was close to Cape Horn. How I knowed that, I can’t tell. But the land was in sight quite plain. Me an’ another feller—I can see his ugly face yet, and sha’n’t never forget it—was makin’ fast one of the jibs. Presen’ly we seemed to ’ave some words out there, hot an’ sharp. Then I done a thing, the like o’ which ud never come into my mind when awake—not if I lived to the age of Methyuseler—I puts my sheath-knife into him right up to the handle.