"Give me your hand, my worthy soul!" exclaimed the seaman; "I revere--nay, hang it! I would die for your feelings! But Tom Elliot was my friend, and I cast anchor in this chair by special commission. I know that a sudden broadside of joy is a bad thing; but, as I don't know how to preach a sermon before telling you, all I have to say is--that Tom an't dead." "Not dead!" said Peter, grasping the hand of the stranger, and speaking with an eagerness that almost choked his utterance: "O sir! sir! tell me how!--how!--Did ye say, living?--Is my ain Thomas living?" "Not dead, do ye say?" cried Mrs. Elliot, hurrying towards him and grasping his other hand--"not dead! And shall I see my bairn again? Oh! may the blessing o' Heaven, and the blessing o' a broken-hearted mother be upon the bearer o' the gracious tidings! But tell me--tell me, how is it possible! As ye would expect happiness here or hereafter, dinna, dinna deceive me!" "Deceive you!" returned the stranger, grasping, with impassioned earnestness, their hands in his--"Never!--never! and all I can say is--Tom Elliot is alive and hearty." "No, no!" said Elizabeth, rising from her seat, "he does not deceive us; there is that in his countenance which bespeaks a falsehood impossible." And she also endeavoured to move towards him, when Johnson threw his arm around her to withhold her. "Hands off, you land-lubber!" exclaimed the seaman, springing towards them, "or, shiver me! I'll show daylight through your timbers in the turning of a hand-spike!" And, clasping the lovely girl in his arms, "Betty! Betty, my love!" he cried, "don't you know your own Tom? Father, mother, don't you know me? Have you really forgot your own son? If twelve years have made some change on his face, his heart is sound as ever." His father, his mother, and his brothers, clung around him, weeping, smiling, and mingling a hundred questions together. He threw his arms around the neck of each, and in answer to their inquiries, replied--"Well! well! there is time enough to answer questions, but not to-day--not to-day!" "No, my bairn," said his mother, "we'll ask you no questions--nobody shall ask you any! But how--how were ye torn away from us, my love? And, O hinny! where--where hae you been?"