When Alister joined us the first evening after we came back from poor Biddy, he was so deeply interested in hearing about her, that he would have gone with us the next morning, if he had not had business on hand.  He had a funny sort of remorse for having misjudged her the day she befooled the sentry to get me off.  Business connected with Biddy’s death detained Dennis in Liverpool for a day or two, and as I had not given any warning of the date of my return to my people, I willingly stayed with him.  My comrades had promised to go home with me before proceeding on their respective ways, but (in answer to the letter which announced his safe arrival in Liverpool) Alister got a message from his mother summoning him to Scotland at once on important family matters, and the Shamrock fell to pieces sooner than we had intended.  In the course of a few days, Dennis and I heard from our old comrade.

“The Braes of Buie.

“MY DEAR JACK AND DENNIS:  I am home safe and sound, though not in time for the funeral, which (as partly consequent on the breaking of a tube in one engine, and a trifling damage to the wheels of a second that was attached, if ye understand me, with the purpose of rectifying the deficiencies of the first, the Company being, in my humble judgment, unwisely thrifty in the matter of second-hand boilers) may be regarded as a dispensation of Providence, and was in no degree looked upon by any member of the family as a wanting of respect towards the memory of the deceased.  With the sole and single exception of Miss Margaret MacCantywhapple, a far-away cousin by marriage, who, though in good circumstances, and a very virtuous woman, may be said to have seen her best days, and is not what she was in her intellectual judgment, being afflicted with deafness and a species of palsy, besides other infirmities in her faculties.  I misdoubt if I was wise in using my endeavours to make the poor body understand that I was at the other side of the world when my cousin was taken sick, all her response being, ‘they aye say so.’  However, at long and last, she was brought to admit that the best of us may misjudge, and as we all have our faults, and hers are for the most part her misfortunes, I tholed her imputations on my veracity in the consideration of her bodily infirmities.

“My dear mother, thank GOD, is in her usual, and overjoyed to see my face once more.  She desires me to present her respects to both of you, with an old woman’s blessing.  I’m aware that it will be a matter of kindly satisfaction to you to learn that her old age is secured in carnal comforts through my father’s cousin having left all his worldly gear for her support; that is, he left it to me, which is the same thing.  Not without a testimony of respect for my father’s memory, that all the gear of Scotland would be cheap to me by the side of; and a few words as to industry, energy, and the like, which, though far from being deserved on my part, sound—­like voices out of the mist upon the mountain side—­sweeter and weightier, it may be, than they deserve, when a body hears them, as ye may say, out of the grave.