linstock and to replace his priming.  The boat had lost its weigh, while the brigantine was flying along now with every sail bulging and swelling to bursting-point.  Crack! went the carronade at last, and five little slits in the mainsail showed that her charge of grape had flown high.  Her second shot left no trace behind it, and at the third she was at the limit of her range.  Half an hour afterwards a little dark dot upon the horizon with a golden speck at one end of it was all that could be seen of the Honfleur guard-boat.  Wider and wider grew the low-lying shores, broader and broader was the vast spread of blue waters ahead, the smoke of Havre lay like a little cloud upon the northern horizon, and Captain Ephraim Savage paced his deck with his face as grim as ever, but with a dancing light in his gray eyes.

“I knew that the Lord would look after His own,” said he complacently.  “We’ve got her beak straight now, and there’s not as much as a dab of mud betwixt this and the three hills of Boston.  You’ve had too much of these French wines of late, Amos, lad.  Come down and try a real Boston brewing with a double stroke of malt in the mash tub.”

CHAPTER XXV.

A BOAT OF THE DEAD.

For two days the Golden Rod lay becalmed close to the Cape La Hague, with the Breton coast extending along the whole of the southern horizon.  On the third morning, however, came a sharp breeze, and they drew rapidly away from land, until it was but a vague dim line which blended with the cloud banks.  Out there on the wide free ocean, with the wind on their cheeks and the salt spray pringling upon their lips, these hunted folk might well throw off their sorrows and believe that they had left for ever behind them all tokens of those strenuous men whose earnest piety had done more harm than frivolity and wickedness could have accomplished.  And yet even now they could not shake off their traces, for the sin of the cottage is bounded by the cottage door, but that of the palace spreads its evil over land and sea.

“I am frightened about my father, Amory,” said Adele, as they stood together by the shrouds and looked back at the dim cloud upon the horizon which marked the position of that France which they were never to see again.

“But he is out of danger now.”

“Out of danger from cruel laws, but I fear that he will never see the promised land.”

“What do you mean, Adele?  My uncle is hale and hearty.”

“Ah, Amory, his very heart-roots were fastened in the Rue St. Martin, and when they were torn his life was torn also.  Paris and his business, they were the world to him.”

“But he will accustom himself to this new life.”

“If it only could be so!  But I fear, I fear, that he is over old for such a change.  He says not a word of complaint.  But I read upon his face that he is stricken to the heart.  For hours together he will gaze back at France, with the tears running silently down his cheeks.  And his hair has turned from gray to white within the week.”