How wise was the advice of the old doctor to make short work of the confession to his mother, and to face the matter of his marriage bravely with his august friends and connections, David little knew. If his marriage had been rash in its haste, nothing in the future should be done rashly. Possibly he might be obliged to return to America before he made a full revelation that a wife awaited him in that far and but dimly appreciated land. In his mind the matter resolved itself into a question of time and careful adjustment. Slowly as the boat ploughed through the never resting waters,--slowly as the western land with its dreams and realities drifted farther into the vapors that blended the line of the land and the sea,--so slowly the future unveiled itself and drew him on, into its new dreams, revealing, with the inevitable progression of the hours, a life heretofore shrouded and only vaguely imagined, as a glowing reality filled with opportunity and power. He felt his whole nature expand and become imbued with intoxicating ambitions, as if hereafter he would be swept onward to ride through life triumphant, even as the boat was riding the sea, surmounting its mysterious depths and taking its unerring way in spite of buffeting of winds and beating of waves. Still young, with renewed vitality, his hopes turned to the future, recognizing the tremendous scope for his energies which his own particular prospects presented. Often he stood alone in the prow, among the coils of rope, and watched the distance unroll before him, while the salt breeze played with his clustering hair and filled his lungs. He loved the long sweep of the prow, as it divided the water and cast it foaming on either side, in opaline and turquoise tints, shifting and falling into the indigo depths of the vastness around. In thought he spanned the wide spaces and leaped still toward the future; before him the gray-haired mother who trembled to hold him once more in her arms, behind him the young wife waiting his return, enclosing him serenely and adoringly in her heart. Each day while on shipboard, David wrote to Cassandra, voluminously. He found it a pleasant way of passing the hours. He described his surroundings and unfolded such of his anticipations as he felt she could best understand and with which she could sympathize, trying to explain to her what the years to come might hold for them both, and telling her always to wait with patience for his return. This could not be known definitely until he had looked into the state of his uncle's affairs--which would hereafter be his own.