again. Only, as his determination was equal to his delicacy, Miss
Rolleston found, one day, a paper on her table, containing advice as to
the treatment of disordered lungs, expressed with apparent coldness, and
backed by a string of medical authorities, quoted _memoriter._

She sent this back directly, indorsed with a line, in pencil, that she
would try hard to live, now she had a friend to protect from calumny; but
should use her own judgment as to the means.

Yet women will be women. She had carefully taken a copy of his advice
before she cast it out with scorn.

He replied, "Live with whatever motive you please; only live."

To this she vouchsafed no answer; nor did this unhappy man trouble her
again, until an occasion of a very different kind arose.

One fine night he sat on the deck, with his back against the mainmast, in
deep melancholy and listlessness, and fell, at last, into a doze, from
which he was wakened by a peculiar sound below. It was a beautiful and
stilly night; all sounds were magnified; and the father of all rats
seemed to be gnawing the ship down below.

Hazel's curiosity was excited, and he went softly down the ladder to see
what the sound really was. But that was not so easy, for it proved to be
below decks; but he saw a light glimmering through a small scuttle abaft
the mate's cabin, and the sounds were in the neighborhood of that light.

It now flashed upon Mr. Hazel that this was the very quarter where he had
heard that mysterious knocking when the ship was lying to in the gale.