Poor Eustace!  He had gone to London to try and get some employment, and having, after some difficulty, succeeded in obtaining a billet as reader in Latin, French and English to a publishing house of good repute, at a salary of L180 a year, he had hurried back to Birmingham for the sole purpose of seeing Miss Augusta Smithers, with whom, if the whole truth must be told, he had, to his credit be it said, fallen deeply, truly, and violently in love.  Indeed, so far was he in this way gone, that he had determined to make all the progress that he could, and if he thought that there was any prospect of success, to declare his passion.  This was, perhaps, a little premature; but then in these matters people are apt to be more premature than is generally supposed.  Human nature is very swift in coming to conclusions in matters in which that strange mixture we call the affections are involved; perhaps because, although the conclusion is not altogether a pleasing one, the affections, at any rate in the beginning, are largely dependent on the senses.

Pity a poor young man!  To come from London to Birmingham to woo one’s grey-eyed mistress, in a third-class carriage too, and find her gone to New Zealand, whither circumstances prevented him from following her, without leaving a word or a line, or even an address behind her!  It was too bad.  Well, there was no remedy in the matter; so he walked to the railway station, and groaned and swore all the way back to London.

Augusta, on board the Kangaroo, was, however, in utter ignorance of this act of devotion on the part of her admirer; indeed, she did not even know that he was her admirer.  Feeling a curious sinking sensation within her, she was about to go below to her cabin, which she shared with a lady’s-maid, not knowing whether to attribute it to sentimental qualms incidental to her lonely departure from the land of her birth, or to other qualms connected with the first experience of life upon the ocean wave.  About that moment, however, a burly quarter-master addressed her in gruff tones, and informed her that if she wanted to see the last of “hold Halbion,” she had better go aft a bit, and look over the port side, and she would see the something or other light.  Accordingly, more to prove to herself that she was not sea-sick than for any other reason, she did so, and, standing as far aft as the second-class passengers were allowed to go, stared at the quick flashes of the light-house, as second by second, they sent their message across the great waste of sea.

As she stood there, holding on to a stanchion to steady herself, for the vessel, large as she was, had begun to get a bit of a roll on, she was suddenly aware of a bulky figure of a man which came running or rather reeling against the bulwarks alongside of her, where it—­or rather he—­was instantly and violently ill.  Augusta was, not unnaturally, almost horrified into following the figure’s example, when, suddenly growing faint or from some