Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes. “Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing. “Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!” She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation, was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood. Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the awful beating of her heart. “No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never come—home—” The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,— “Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring, he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me. I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?” “No, no——” “And I shall be stronger then, and we must make the house pleasant for him. It will never be lonely any more when he is here. Why do you cry so, Hannah? It is not long to wait for him now.” Hannah, trying to smother her choking sobs, slipped down on the floor with her face covered, and Miriam talked on and on of the happy times they would have when “Tommy” came back in the Spring. She could be made to comprehend nothing of the dreadful tidings. He had promised her he would come back, and her faith never faltered. But there was a distinct change in her from that day. The quiet, reserved manner that had been with her always a marked characteristic, seldom volunteering a sentence to a stranger, was gone. She talked incessantly of her son. She would tell every person she met how much stronger she was getting, and how she meant to go and meet him at the wharf when the Nereid came in. So months went by, and Miriam did get stronger every day. She had not been so well in years, not since long ago when poor Tom had first taken to following the sea. Bright and happy she seemed from morning till night, only Hannah noticed that sometimes when speaking most earnestly she would stop suddenly for a moment, and look at her in a bewildered way, with that same wavering light flickering up in her eyes.