The first letter signed "Deborah Dalzell" was addressed, strange to
say, to Guthrie Carey--not to the commander of the SS APHRODITE, via
his shipping office, but to Guthrie Carey, Esq., Wellwood Hall,
Norfolk.

For a great change had taken place in the circumstances of her old
friend.

One day, a few years earlier, he had been called from the sea--
somewhere off the coast of South America--to take his place as a
land-owner and land-dweller amongst the great squires of England; quite
the very last thing he could have anticipated in his wildest dreams.
Three sons of the reigning Carey had been capsized in a gale while out
yachting. The reigning Carey, on hearing of the catastrophe, had been
seized with a fit that proved fatal in a few hours. His eldest son's
wife, as an effect of the same shock, had given birth to a still-born
male infant--the sole grandson. One brother had died childless;
another leaving daughters only; the third, Guthrie's father, was also
dead. Thus the unexpected happened, as it has a way of doing in this
world, and the t'penny-ha'penny mate of old Redford days had become the
head of a county family.

His experiences had trained him for the change. He took it soberly,
without losing his head. A bristling array of blood-enemies
were gradually transformed into a circle of respectful friends; some of
them assisted him to settle himself in his unfamiliar seat, to teach
him the duties of his high station. He was teachable, but independent,
not shutting his eyes and opening his mouth to swallow all the
old-world creeds they chose to put into it, but studying every branch
of the science of landlordism in the light of his own intelligence and