My mother had his long pipe and his tobacco all ready for him, so
that he was able now to light it and to sit looking from one of us
to the other and then back again, as if he could never see enough of
us. Young as I was, I could still understand that this was the
moment which he had thought of during many a lonely watch, and that
the expectation of it had cheered his heart in many a dark hour.
Sometimes he would touch one of us with his hand, and sometimes the
other, and so he sat, with his soul too satiated for words, whilst
the shadows gathered in the little room and the lights of the inn
windows glimmered through the gloom. And then, after my mother had
lit our own lamp, she slipped suddenly down upon her knees, and he
got one knee to the ground also, so that, hand-in-hand, they joined
their thanks to Heaven for manifold mercies. When I look back at my
parents as they were in those days, it is at that very moment that I
can picture them most clearly: her sweet face with the wet shining
upon her cheeks, and his blue eyes upturned to the smoke-blackened
ceiling. I remember that he swayed his reeking pipe in the
earnestness of his prayer, so that I was half tears and half smiles
as I watched him.

"Roddy, lad," said he, after supper was over, "you're getting a man
now, and I suppose you will go afloat like the rest of us. You're
old enough to strap a dirk to your thigh."

"And leave me without a child as well as without a husband!" cried
my mother.

"Well, there's time enough yet," said he, "for they are more
inclined to empty berths than to fill them, now that peace has come.
But I've never tried what all this schooling has done for you,