It was a joyful meeting at the island-fortress in the blue Mediterranean. Alan obtained leave to sleep on shore, and took a little white cottage that overlooked the bay, where the good ship "Thunderer" lay at anchor; and there, at her outhanging window, every evening Minnie would sit, looking so anxiously across the bay towards the great black hull of the vessel, till a gig would put off that brought Alan home to her. So the days and weeks went on. The spring died into the summer's flowery lap; the summer ripened and mellowed unto the golden autumn; and when the year's late last months were come, there was another inmate in the little cottage by the bay; another pair of eyes, blue as the mother's, to greet Alan as he came home at night; another pair of hands to hold and call his own. The time ran as quickly as it ran happily. The three years passed, and again Alan had to put his wife on board a passenger steamer bound for England--this time with her boy Harry to bear her company, a sturdy young gentleman of somewhat over two years; while he himself sailed for Plymouth in the "Thunderer." And so it came to pass, that after many such changes of abode, and many voyages over the dangerous waters, twelve years from the date of their marriage, they came to Wilton. They found lodgings at Mrs Valentine's farm, near the old church--a strange contrast after the home on the blue waters of the Mediterranean, but a very nice contrast withal. And it seemed, at last, as if poor Mrs Campbell had found a climate that suited her, and that put new life and strength into her failing, fragile form. For those happy and treacherous nights, spent in looking over the bay at Malta for her husband's home-coming, had sown the seeds of a consumption, that each month now seemed to be increasing its wasting, rapid strides. Yet at Wilton she seemed revived and better than she had been for long; and Alan grew more cheerful and hopeful that, if God pleased, her life, with care and watching, might be spared. So he took rooms at the farm for a length of time; sent his boy, now grown into a young image of his stout father, to a grammar-school in the village, and determined that, as the place agreed with her so well, Minnie should make it her home, even when he went to sea. And once more their happiness lost the cloud of doubt and anxiety that for long had been hanging over it. But the dream was soon to be snapt. One evening Alan came home to find his wife much worse than she had ever been. He learnt the cause. She had been sitting with a sick person, and from the hot, sickroom had passed out into the damp evening air. And this was the result.