"So soft it used to be!" he said. "It's been hard-worked since then. It would be well for Lotty, if death were a long sleep: she needs it." Jacobus made no reply. He sat down and held his dead in his arms; she was his own; so were those years of hard work which had worn her hands rough, and left these sharp lines in her face. He only knew what they had been: in the long silence that followed, while the daylight broadened bluer and colder about him, he lived them over again; and he knew then, by every day of griping poverty, which it wrung the clammy drops out of his face to remember,--by all her patient tenderness,--by the happiness they had hoped for, but which never came,--by the true love they had borne to each other, and to little Tom, which knew so little comfort, he knew that the recompense would come, that the end was not yet She had shaken off the hunger and the pain, and had gone into the world where only the love endured and found its comfort and its late reward. There was such a world--somewhere. He put back the grayed hair from the forehead; little Tom had such a brow,--broad, quiet, melancholy. "'I will go to them,'" he said, "'but they will not return to me!'" * * * * * Was it he that had been dead, and waked again? A strong hand lifting his head; a warm face and breath at his cheek; a voice calling him as sweet and cheerful as when first he heard it on the banks of the--little creek in Canada? Then out of the reeling and groping of shadows and real objects came a square bay-window opening on a sea-horizon of drifting olive-gray clouds, the crackle and glow of a great wood-fire, a cheerful breakfast-room, and some busy chatter about a night spent sleeping in drenched clothes and night-fogs. Lufflin's round, red face was the first real grip his senses took of it all. The Captain was in his holiday suit of blue and brass, and pulled down his jacket with a complacent twinkle in his eyes. "Faith, ye'll suffer a sea-change in short order, Mounchere, if you spend a few more nights dreaming by that window! Your very eyes look rheumy and glazed already." Jacobus got up, stunned and dull beyond his wont,--his eyes fixed, not on the joking Captain, but on the anxious, wondering face upturned to his. He touched the cheek, a little worn and haggard, may-be, but with good, healthy blood reddening it,--felt the nervous hands,--then stooped and solemnly kissed her lips. They trembled a little; then she laughed. "Did the sea send you dreams of me?"--trying to jest, but with some of last night's trouble in her eyes. "Not the sea,"--putting his hand to his head; "I think God sent them, Lotty."