her; and one of my boys was dead; and he didn't know where the rest of
the children was, but he'd heard two of the little ones was with a
family in the city."

The man mentioned these things with the half-apologetical air observable
in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to
confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your
sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of
having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk
so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and perhaps
these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's
quivering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark
face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn
cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to
stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall at
such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry click, and went on:--

"I hunted about the whole forenoon in the city, and at last I found the
children. I'd been gone so long they didn't know me, and somehow I
thought the people they were with weren't over-glad I'd turned up.
Finally the oldest child told me that Julia was living with a Mr.
Hapford on this street, and I started out here to-night to look her up.
If I can find her, I'm all right. I can get the family together, then,
and start new."

"It seems rather odd," mused the listener aloud, "that the neighbors let
them break up so, and that they should all scatter as they did."

"Well, it ain't so curious as it seems, Cap'n. There was money for them
at the owners', all the time; I'd left part of my wages when I sailed;