The journey was commenced.  ‘I shall return in a fortnight,’ said Mrs Hardman.  ’Should anything occur requiring my presence earlier, pray ride or send off for me.’  These were her parting words.  They did not surprise Catherine, for well she knew that an irrepressible presentiment kept possession of the mother’s mind that the lost son would one day return.  There was not a morning that she rose from her pillow, but the expectation of seeing her son before sunset existed in her mind.

Mrs Hardman had been away a week.  Catherine had removed to her father’s house, and was preparing to sit down to sew, as was her custom, when her father, returning from the office adjoining, brought her a letter.  ‘It is very odd,’ he remarked, ’but amidst my business communications I find this epistle addressed to you.  See, it is marked “sailor’s letter.”  I imagine it must be intended for one of the servants.’

Catherine made no reply; a presentiment darted into her mind.  Usually a quiet, calm girl, her nature seemed suddenly to have changed.  She snatched the letter from her father’s hand, tore it open, looked at the signature, and fell into his arms in an agony of emotion.  Absorbed by her painful struggles, Dodbury overlooked the cause of them; and Catherine, with one intense, overwhelming thought burning within her, placed the letter before him.  She tried to speak, but the agony of joy which she felt choked her.  The father read the signature; it was ‘Herbert Hardman!’

The reaction came, and Catherine for a time was calm.  She said she could listen to the contents of the letter; and Dodbury began to peruse it.  Hardman was alive and well; and a new tide of emotion gushed forth from the panting listener.  With the ardent impulse of a pious heart, she sunk upon her knees, and uttered a fervent thanksgiving to the universal Protector.  It was long ere she could hear more.  There might be something behind—­some dreadful qualification to all the rapture with which her soul was flooded.  This thought was insupportable, and as Dodbury saw that his child must hear the whole, he read the epistle word for word.  It was a strange narrative.

When Herbert left Plympton Court, he determined to stay a night at Plymouth.  Walking on a place called Britain Side, near the quay, he was unexpectedly seized by a press-gang.  They hurried him on board the tender, lying off Cat-down; and immediately draughted him to a small frigate, which was to sail the next morning, as part of a convoy to some Indian ships.  Accordingly, they sailed.  The frigate was commissioned to drop dispatches at Gibraltar, and arriving off that place she was obliged to lag some miles behind, to fulfil her orders.  After having done so, and made all sail to rejoin the convoy, she was attacked by a Barbary rover of superior strength, was beaten, most of the crew captured, and conveyed into port.  They were taken to the market-place, and sold as slaves.