"It is of no use," said Brace Norton, one day, when he had been home about a month, "I can't fight against fate. I vowed that I'd think no more about her, and I've thought about nothing else ever since. I go out very seldom, but when I do, I always seem to meet her. I've heard a good deal of milk-and-sugar talk about love; and if this is what is called love, all I can say is that it's worse than mast-heading. I can't help it--I can't keep free of it! What in the world did I get looking at her for, as I did, that day coming home? Brace Norton--Brace Norton, I'm afraid that you are a great ass!" He sat thinking for awhile, trying to be light-hearted, and to sweep his troubles away, but he soon owned to himself that it was no laughing matter. "Heaven help me!" he groaned, "for a miserable, unhappy wretch--one who seems fated to make those about him suffer! It seems almost as if I were to endure the same torments as my poor father, without the alleviation of some other gentle hand to heal my wounds. Wounds! Pooh! stuff! What romantic twaddle I am talking! It is time I was off back to sea. But, there, I've fought against it, all for their sakes, till it has been enough to drive me mad. I suppose men were meant to be butterflies, and to burn their wings in the light of some particular star; so the sooner I get mine singed off, and get on board ship, the better. There's no romance there. Anything's better than this state of torment. Here am I, making myself disagreeable to the best of fathers and the tenderest of mothers; and because things run in a rut different from that which suits me, I go sulking about like a spoiled child in love with a jam-pot; and after making everybody miserable at home, go sneaking and wandering about after the fashion of a confounded tramp poaching somebody's goslings. I expect I shall be locked up one of these days. Seriously, though, I wish I had not come back," he said, dreamily; "I wish that a reconciliation were possible; I wish I had never seen her; I wish--I wish--There, what is the good of wishing? What a wretched life this is, and how things do contrive to get in a state of tangle! I don't think I ever tried to meet her, and yet how often, day after day, we seem to encounter! Even the thought of the old past sorrows seems to bring her closer and closer. Why, then, should not this be the means of bringing old sorrows to an end, and linking together the two families?" Brace Norton brought his ponderings to a close, as, bit by bit, he recalled the past; and then he groaned in spirit, as his reason told him how impossible was a reconciliation.