‘Ay. And what flower d’ye think it is, miss?’ said he, again showing his fangs. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘It’s a nettle. If yah should care to visit the burial-ground yonder,’ he continued, with a backward nod of his head in the direction of Woolwich, ‘yah ’ll see for yourself. As if nothen would blow ower a convict but that! Of course the finger o’ nater’s in it. The finger o’ nater’s got the straight tip for most jobs. It’s daisies for the likes of you and me, and nettles for them as goes wrong.’ I was too agitated to converse with such a heartless creature as this. My mind was full of Tom. I wondered how he would greet me--how I should find him looking. We should be allowed but a quarter of an hour. What time would that give me, to whom a long summer day was all too brief in which to tell him how I loved him; how I meant to follow him; how our loyalty to one another should, if God permitted, triumph yet over the horrors and the sufferings which might lie between the now and the hour of victorious emergence! We were still about a mile from the hulk, when I observed a large ship in tow of a tug coming up the river. She sat deep in the water and was plainly fresh from a long voyage, rusty about the bows and weather-stained along the line of her painted ports; but she carried the smartness of a frigate aloft in the well-squared yards, from which all canvas had been unbent, and in the perfectly-stayed and lofty topgallant-masts, whose royal yards had been sent down. I seemed to recognise the large house-flag she flew at the main. ‘What ship is that?’ I asked, well aware that Thames watermen know every ship out of London. He turned his chin on his shoulder and viewed her leisurely and answered: ‘The _Childe Harold_.’ ‘The _Childe Harold_!’ I cried, and I threw up my veil to look at her. Will Johnstone’s ship! I could scarcely credit my eyes. She glided, stately and slow, in the wake of the tug. Her home was at hand, the forest of the East India Docks was in sight, and the paddles of the little steamer were beating the water slowly. I observed a crowd of people on the forecastle, and a number of men and women walked the poop, or after-deck. The red flag streamed brightly from the peak, the glass and brass about her sparkled, the little circular windows in her side flashed like gems as they took the sun, and the raiment of the ladies fluttered in many tints. Here and there a sailor was trotting aloft, and a man standing high and conspicuously on the forecastle was shouting, with one hand against his mouth, to the tug. As the noble ship passed she made a holiday picture of the water round about her and the land on either hand. I stared hard, hoping I might catch a sight of Will, but the distance between was too wide to enable me to distinguish faces.