"Yes, that is something--a good deal. I have friends enough, unless they have died since I last heard from them. But for household gods, I have none; or, rather, my ancestral Lares have no better abode than an old clapboarded parsonage in an up-country Yankee village. You are much more fortunate in that respect. You go home again, besides, a new man, rejuvenated in mind and body." "Thanks to you for that. I was a wreck till you set me afloat and refitted me." "I gave you a shove off shore; but the refitting came afterwards, and was no doing of mine. I should hardly know you for the same man." "That infatuation seems to me like a dream, as I remember you prophesied on the evening when we sat together on the Battery." "Half of a woman's weakness springs from the sensitiveness of her bodily organization; and three fourths of your infatuation may be laid to the same account. One may say that, without any tendency to flounder into materialism. You are a man again now; and even if you had not heard of your sorceress's death, you might go back, I think, without the least fear of her spells." "I hope so; but I wish that, like you, I had some engrossing object to return to." "I wish that, like you, I had a family, and a fixed home to return to. My travels are finished, though. I have roamed the world enough. My objects are accomplished, as well as I could ever accomplish them. I have not wandered for nothing; and now I shall bend myself to make my journeyings bear what fruit I can. By the sun, and by my watch, it is time for the consul to have returned. Did not his servant say that he would come ashore from the frigate at about six?" "Yes." "If he does not, I will get a boat and go to find him. He must have letters for one or the other of us." "I will ride to the town, and see if he has come." "Very well; I will wait for you here." Their horses were near at hand, in the keeping of an Arab servant. Buckland mounted his own, and rode off. Morton seated himself on a jutting edge of the rock overhanging the bay, and gave himself up to his thoughts.