I arrived in time to witness my great-uncle’s last moments.  He recognised me, clasped me to his breast, blessed me at the same time as Edmee, and put my hand into his daughter’s.

After we had paid the last tribute of affection to our noble and excellent relative, we left the province for sometime and paid a visit to Switzerland, Patience and the Abbe Aubert bearing us company.

At the end of Edmee’s mourning we returned.  This was the time that had been fixed for our marriage, which was duly celebrated in the village chapel.

The years of happiness with my wife beggar description.  She was the only woman I ever loved, and though she has now been dead ten years I feel her loss as keenly as on the first day, and seek only to make myself worthy of rejoining her in a better world after I have completed my probation here.

* * * * *

MICHAEL SCOTT

Tom Cringle’s Log

Michael Scott was a merchant who turned an unquestioned literary faculty to excellent account.  Born at Cowlairs, near Glasgow, Scotland, Oct. 30, 1789, at the age of seventeen Scott was sent to Jamaica to manage a small estate of his father’s, and a few years later entered business at Kingstown.  Both of these occupations necessitated frequent journeys, by land and by sea, and the experiences gained thereby form the basis of “Tom Cringle’s Log.”  The story appeared anonymously at intermittent intervals in “Blackwood’s Magazine” (1829-33), being published in book form in 1834.  Its authorship was attributed, among others, to Captain Marryatt, and so successfully did Scott himself conceal his identity with it that the secret was not known until after his death, which occurred at Glasgow on November 7, 1835.  Of its kind, “Tom Cringle’s Log” is a veritable masterpiece.  Humour and pathos and gorgeous descriptions are woven into a thrilling narrative.  Scott wrote many other things beside “Tom Cringle,” but only one story, “The Cruise of the Midge” (1836), is in any way comparable with his first and most famous romance.

I.—­The Quenching of the Torch

The evening was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a gale from the westward, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed on the black hull and tall spars of his Britannic Majesty’s sloop Torch.  At the distance of a mile or more lay a long, warlike-looking craft, rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the sea.

A flash was seen; the shot fell short, but close to us, evidently thrown from a heavy cannon.

Mr. Splinter, the first lieutenant, jumped from the gun he stood on, and dived into the cabin to make his report.