There was nothing to detain me a day longer in the Colonies; the richest claim on the goldfields would not have tempted me to delay my journey home. I had money enough for content, and love made me rich. I looked through the shipping advertisements in a Melbourne newspaper. A mail steamer was advertised to leave for London this very day; I could not catch it, and I should have to wait a fortnight for the next. Another merchant steamer was to leave for Liverpool in two days. I determined to take passage in it. I could get to Melbourne in time. As I walked to the telegraph office, the man who had saved me from falling when I opened my solicitor's letter passed by and looked me in the face. "Better, mate?" he asked. "Yes," I answered. "It was good news, then?" he said. "Yes," I said, mechanically, and caught my breath. What if I had told him that the good news was the death of my wife? From the telegraph office I dispatched three messages. One to the shipping agent in Melbourne to secure a cabin in the outgoing steamer; the second to my solicitor in London, announcing my intended departure from the colony; the third to Ellen--"I am coming home." Wonderful was the contrast between this sea voyage and the last I had undertaken. For the greater part of the time I think I must have been the happiest man on board. On the first voyage I had schooled myself into resignation and submission to my fate, and had taken but a fitful interest in the novel aspects of life by which I was surrounded. Now they appealed to me sympathetically, and I instinctively responded to the appeal. I chatted and made friends. I found zest in the simple amusements of ship life. I spent many happy hours in contemplation of the future, and in arranging the details. Ellen and I would go to some quiet country place, where we were not known, and there we would get married. Deciding not to live in London, we would discuss together in what part of England we would make our home. The sunniest months of my life had been passed in Swanage, and I would have chosen that delightful spot because of its memories, and because it would have been Ellen's choice, had I not been restrained by the thought of Maxwell. Although with Barbara's death his power over me had practically disappeared, still in the circumstances of our life in Swanage--Ellen a single woman and I a married man living apart from my wife--Maxwell's malice might sow thorns in our path. As far as was possible, this must be avoided. We would select some part of England where we were strangers, where the people we mixed with had no personal experience of our past. There, in a little cottage with a garden we would pass our days, and there I would resume my literary labors, and under a nom de plume strive to obtain a footing in the field most congenial to me. My adventures on the goldfields would supply me with attractive themes.