“He’s a willian!” muttered the wife—­“but—­but—­”

“You forgive him, Jack—­yes, I’m sure you do.  You are too good a Christian to refuse to forgive him.”

“I’m a woman a’ter all, Miss Rose; and that, I believe, is the truth of it.  I suppose I ought to do as you say, for the reason you mention; but I’m his wife—­and once he loved me, though that has long been over.  When I first knew Stephen, I’d the sort of feelin’s you speak of, and was a very different creatur’ from what you see me to-day.  Change comes over us all with years and sufferin’.”

Rose did not answer, but she stood looking intently at the speaker more than a minute.  Change had, indeed, come over her, if she had ever possessed the power to please the fancy of any living man.  Her features had always seemed diminutive and mean for her assumed sex, as her voice was small and cracked; but, making every allowance for the probabilities, Rose found it difficult to imagine that Jack Tier had ever possessed, even under the high advantages of youth and innocence, the attractions so common to her sex.  Her skin had acquired the tanning of the sea; the expression of her face had become hard and worldly; and her habits contributed to render those natural consequences of exposure and toil even more than usually marked and decided.  By saying “habits,” however, we do not mean that Jack had ever drunk to excess, as happens with so many seamen, for this would have been doing her injustice, but she smoked and chewed—­practices that intoxicate in another form, and lead nearly as many to the grave as excess in drinking.  Thus all the accessories about this singular being, partook of the character of her recent life and duties.  Her walk was between a waddle and a seaman’s roll, her hands were discoloured with tar, and had got to be full of knuckles, and even her feet had degenerated into that flat, broad-toed form that, perhaps, sooner distinguishes caste, in connection with outward appearances, than any one other physical peculiarity.  Yet this being had once been young—­had once been even fair; and had once possessed that feminine air and lightness of form, that as often belongs to the youthful American of her sex, perhaps, as to the girl of any other nation on earth.  Rose continued to gaze at her companion for some time, when she walked musingly to a window that looked out upon the port.

“I am not certain whether it would do him good or not to see this sight,” she said, addressing the wife kindly, doubtful of the effect of her words even on the latter.  “But here are the sloop-of-war, and several other vessels.”

“Ay, she is there; but never will his foot be put on board the Swash ag’in.  When he bought that brig I was still young, and agreeable to him; and he gave her my maiden name, which was Mary, or Molly Swash.  But that is all changed; I wonder he did not change the name with his change of feelin’s.”

“Then you did really sail in the brig in former times, and knew the seaman whose name you assumed?”