L'Estrange silently took his place in the small lugger. Hans and old Bill spread the sail, the Captain took the rudder. After one or two sousers, they got under weigh, and steered for the schooner, which lay in the Leith roads, and was ready to carry them to Italy. Despite the snow, Bill and the Captain sang sea songs, and drank grog, but vainly attempted to rouse their sombre companion. He was miserable; he was leaving Albion for the last time as far as he knew,--leaving his country--leaving his hopes, his fears, his everything. It was a severe wrench. Bad as he was, he was not like the Captain, without one redeeming quality; amid all the vice, guilt, and blackness of his heart, one star shone--the brighter in contrast to the darkness around it. The snow drifted heavily on him, he shook it not off, he felt it not; a sense of utter sickness and despair was at his heart: he knew all was his own doing--he sighed now only for her _friendship_, only to see her--she could not be his wife now, and he was, by a life of guilt and vice, closing even that door of hope. How could a creature so pure, so beautiful, so refined, look on a wretch like him, so impure, so unholy, so lost to all sense of even shame! Every hour of his present life was adding another league to the distance that severed her from him in this life, as every bound his vessel made was adding another wave to the many that rolled between them. He wished the next billow would gulph their frail boat; alas! it rode them like a seagull, and seemed as if it mocked his misery and laughed at his woe. He was lost--not even the prospect of meeting her above. A gulph--a great gulph was fixed between them; she couldn't love him; he loved her still, though he felt he dared not look up to her, so vile had he become. He was roused from this dream by the clanging of the coupling chains, which showed they had reached the schooner. More dead than alive he was hoisted up, and soon sails were spread, "And, shrouded as they go, In a hurricane of snow," they soon made for the open main. When poor L'Estrange next woke, nothing but waters were around him, and old England, and all good, all delightful, all virtuous, left on the lee. He then tried to nerve himself up; he drank, he swore like the rest, and even joined in the song-- "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" with its ending lines,-- "If of herself she will not love Nothing can make her." "Ha! grown wise at last," said the Captain; "'let the devil take her,' and wine and laughter for us!" L'Estrange's heart still beat true, and though he laughed, sang, and seemed after this the gayest of the gay, all was false. Often, when on his lone couch, on the lonely billow, his eyes would fill with bitter tears as he thought on what he was now, and what he had been; as he thought how sad a contrast his present loveless wicked life was to that of former years, he would cry with Byron--