been received with unbounded joy by his child-friend; had brought her
his outgrown suit of uniform; had spent several months at Luckenough,
and renewed his old delightful intimacy with its little heiress
presumptive, and at length had gone to sea again for another three
years' voyage. And it must be confessed that Jacquelina had found the
second parting more grievous than the first. And this time Cloudesley
had fully shared her sorrow. He had been absent a year, when, upon one
night the old mansion, that had withstood the storms of more than two
hundred winters, was burned to the ground!

The fire broke out in the kitchen. How, no one knew exactly.

Be the cause as it may, upon the evening of the fire Jacquelina had gone
to her room--she had an apartment to herself now--and feeling for the
first time in her life some little uneasiness about her uncle's "whim"
of wedding her to Grim, she had walked about the floor for some time in
much disquietude of mind and body; then she went to a wardrobe, and took
out Cloudy's treasured first uniform, and held it up before her. How
small it looked now; why, it was scarcely too large for herself! And how
much Cloudy had outgrown it! It had fitted him nicely at sixteen, now he
was twenty-one, and in two years more he would be home again! Smiling to
herself, and tossing her charming head, as at some invisible foe, she
said:

"Yes, indeed. I should so like to see them marry me to that ogre Grim!"

She pressed the cloth up to her face, and put it away, and, still
smiling to herself, retired to rest, to dream of her dear playmate.

She dreamed of being in his ship on the open sea, the scene idealized to