ESTHER MASON.

About forty years ago, Jabez Woodford, a foreman of shipwrights in the Plymouth dockyard, whilst carelessly crossing one of the transverse beams of a seventy-four gun-ship, building in that arsenal, missed his footing, fell to the bottom of the hold of the huge vessel, and was killed on the spot.  He left a widow and one child—­a boy seven years of age, of placid, endearing disposition, but weak intellect—­almost in a state of destitution.  He had been a coarse-tempered, improvident man; and like too many of his class, in those days at least, dissipated the whole of his large earnings in present sensuous indulgence, utterly careless or unmindful of the future.  Esther Woodford, who, at the time of her husband’s death, scarcely numbered five-and-twenty years, was still a remarkably comely, as well as interesting, gentle-mannered person; and moreover had, for her station in life, received a tolerable education.  Her rash, ill-assorted marriage with Woodford had been hastily contracted when she was barely seventeen years of age, in consequence of a jealous pique which she, for some silly reason or other, had conceived regarding Henry Mason, an intelligent, young seafaring man, of fair prospects in life, and frank disposition, with whom she had for some time previously, as the west-country phrase has it, “kept company,” and who was, moreover, tenderly attached to her.  Esther’s married life was one long repentance of the rash act; and the severance of the tie which bound her to an ungenial mate—­after the subsidence of the natural horror and compassion excited by the sudden and frightful nature of the catastrophe—­must have been felt as a most blessed relief.  A few weeks afterwards, she accepted an asylum with her brother-in-law, Davies, a market-gardener in the vicinity of Plymouth, where, by persevering industry with her needle, and thrifty helpfulness in her sister’s household duties, she endeavored to compensate her kind-hearted relatives for the support of herself and helpless, half-witted child.  Mason she had never seen since the day previous to her marriage; but she knew he was prospering in the busy world, and that, some time before her husband’s death, he had been appointed chief-mate in a first-class merchant-ship trading to the Pacific.  He had sailed about a fortnight previous to that event; and now, ten lazy months having slowly floated past, the lover of her youth, with whom, in that last sunny day of her young life—­how distant did it seem, viewed through the long intervening vista of days and nights of grief and tears!—­she had danced so joyously beneath the flowering chestnut-trees, was once more near her; and it was—­oh happiness!—­no longer a sin to think of him—­no longer a crime to recall and dwell upon the numberless proofs of the deep affection, the strong love, he had once felt for her. Once felt!  Perhaps even now!—­How swiftly had the intelligence communicated by her sympathizing sister tinted with bright hues the dark curtain of the future!