any one in Jason's shoes would have been equally regardless of the
regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.

With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No one
of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he assured
himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the dove-cot
where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar, and in
silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he reached the
wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once beheld the
ruin of his hopes--the thistles in the paths, the roses overgrown and
choked with weeds, the sad and general decay. Jason smote his breast
in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves fluttered out from the porch
of the cottage in amazement at the approach of a human foot to their
domains.

What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while suspicions
taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered garden he
paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and fro, and
were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea, and the
dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he beheld the
lights of the little town below him: across the solemn silence floated
the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned toward the tower on
the headland. A single ray of light stealing from one of the high,
narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven. "The ladder
of Jacob's dream," said Jason: "on it the angels are ascending and
descending in their visitations. Oh that I, like Jacob, might receive
intelligence from these!"

With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the town
and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments of