being he loved. This young woman carried the note to Mrs. Jacobs. She read
it, made no comment, and handed it back. Her visitor was chilled and
terrified by her manner.

"Can I do any thing for you, Mrs. Jacobs?" she said. "I do assure you I
sympathize with you most deeply. I think the boy will soon come back. He
will find the sea life very different from what he has dreamed."

"No, you can do nothing for me," replied Mrs. Jacobs, in a voice as
unmoved as her face. "He will never come back. He will be drowned." And
from that day no one ever heard her mention her son. It was believed,
however, that she had news from him, and that she sent him money; for,
although the rents of her house were paid to her regularly, she grew if
possible more and more penurious every year, allowing herself barely
enough food to support life, and wearing such tattered and patched clothes
that she was almost an object of terror to children when they met her in
lonely fields and woods, bending down to the ground and searching for
herbs like an old witch. At one time, also, she went in great haste to a
lawyer in the village, and with his assistance raised three thousand
dollars on a mortgage on her house, mortgaging it very nearly to its full
value. In vain he represented to her that, in case the house should chance
to stand empty for a year, she would have no money to pay the interest on
her mortgage, and would lose the property. She either could not
understand, or did not care for what he said. The house always had brought
her in about so many dollars a year; she believed it always would; at any
rate, she wanted this money. And so it came to pass that the mortgage on
the old Jacobs house had come into Stephen White's hands, and he was now
living in one half of it, his own tenant and landlord at once, as he often
laughingly said.