Slowly the ship sailed up the harbor, slowly it reached the dock, and after almost two years’ wandering, the Nereid rested once more in her native waters. As the boat touched the wharf, Hannah had taken her mother’s arm, perhaps that she might hold her back, but Miriam made no effort to move. The girl could feel her trembling, trembling, but she only put up her hand unsteadily and brushed the hair away from her face. Too well Hannah knew poor Tom would not be there, and, as through a mist, she saw the sailors swing themselves down. In the dreadful trouble that had come upon her, she had almost forgotten Luke. During all these weeks of anguish she had thought only of her mother, but this morning the strain had been too severe. She had given up the battle, and now waited stonily; she would have waited on all day, when Miriam, suddenly breaking loose from her, in a voice half stifled by a wild delight, cried,— “O, Tommy, my boy, my only boy!” It was Luke that stood beside her, whom she had strangely mistaken for her son. She would have fallen to the ground had he not caught her in his arms. Unable to speak for a moment, she clung to him trembling violently. Clasping her hands tight about his neck, she closed her eyes, and, with a quivering sigh, laid her head against his shoulder. Hannah, looking at Luke quickly, made a gesture that kept him silent, then Miriam, without moving, said, brokenly,— “I have waited for you, Tommy. It was such a long, long time, but I knew you would come—” She paused, while a slight struggle in her breath escaped, like a sob, from her lips, then went on once more still in an unsteady tone,— “I am so glad, so glad! I am well and strong, Tommy. I feel a little tired now, but I am well and strong. You will never leave me, never leave me any more—” There was another feeble struggle in her throat; then when she spoke again, her voice, growing fainter at every effort, seemed to come from some far-off distance, drifting in to them as from the desert spaces of an illimitable sea. “Do not let me go. It is cold, and the wind—Hark! Listen, oh listen how sweet and soft the waters wash! Hold me close, Tommy. I am weary. Why, it is Summer! Look! see the land, the foreign land! Stay, Tommy, I am tired—so tired—” Her head had drooped back heavily on the man’s arm, but her lips still moved, and suddenly her face lighted up with a radiant smile. “Nearer,—come nearer—How bright the sunlight shines upon your face! Tommy, my boy—my sailor boy—” So, on that bleak March morning when the Nereid came in, Miriam had indeed gone to meet her son, her sailor son, on that far, far off foreign shore that is girdled by the mightier ocean of eternity. [Illustration] [Illustration] REINHART, THE GERMAN.