"If it's proper, and just the same to you, ask the Lord to send Barton Cathcart home, and let me see the boy once more afore I die!"

Tommy Taft had a large head and face. Usually there was a rugged and somewhat sharp expression to his features. But sickness had turned his face pale, his bushy side locks were very grey, and his eyes peered out from under his brow with more than common brightness. He did not shut them while Dr. Buell prayed. He looked over the form of the kneeling minister with an expression in which mirth was blended with pain. It seemed

to say:

"Poor fellow! It don't take much to make you happy!"

It was very plain that Tommy did not accept any one as priest but Barton Cathcart, and that the only thread by which his rugged nature could be led was the single golden strand of affection.

He grew daily weaker, and more and more crabbed. It was a hard task for Mother Taft. He poured out words like paving stones upon her. He would agree to nothing, and seemed likely to go out of the world like a shaggy bear seeking his northern covert for hybernation. On the first day of March it was, that Tommy Taft had been unquietly sleeping in the forenoon, to make up for

a disturbed night. The little noisy clock,-that regarded itself as the essence of a Yankee, and ticked with immense alacrity, and struck in the most bustling and emphatic manner,—this industrious and moral clock began striking, whir-r-r, one; whir-r-r, two; whir-r-r, three; (Tommy jerked his head a little as if something vexed him in his sleep; (“whir-r-r, four; whir-r-r, five; whir-r-r, six; ("Keep still, will ye? let me alone, old woman! d- your medicine;" whir-r-r, seven ; whir-r-r, eight; ("God in Heaven! as sure as I live," said Tommy, rubbing his eyes as if to make sure that they saw aright ;) whir-r-r, nine; whir-r-r, ten! Then, holding out his arms with the simplicity of a child, his face fairly glowing with joy, and looking now really noble, he cried :

"Barton, my boy, Barton, I knew you wouldn't let the old man die, and not help him! I knew it! I knew it!"

After the first surprise of joy subsided, Tommy pushed Barton from the edge of his bed :

"Stand up, boy; turn round! There he is! Now I'm all right. Got my pilot aboard. Sealed orders-ready to sail the minit the hawser's let go."

After a few words about his return from the West, his health and prospects, the old man returned to the subject that seemed to lie nearest his heart.

VOL. III.

D

"They've all had a hand at me, Barton. There's twenty firms in this town that is willin' to give a feller sailin' orders, when they see he's out'ard bound. But I am an old salt-I know my owners!" said Tommy, with an affectionate wink at Barton.

“Oh, my boy, you're back agin; it's all right now. Don't you let me go wrong. I want you to tell me just where you're goin', and I'll bear right up for that port! You know, Barton, I never cheated you, when you was a boy. I took care of ye, and never told you a lie in my life, and never got you in a scrape. You won't cheat an old man now, will ye?”

It was all that Barton could do to maintain his self-possession. Tears and smiles kept company on his face.

"My dear old Tommy, we won't part company. We're both bound to the same land. God will, I fervently hope, for Christ's sake, forgive all our sins, and make us meet for everlasting life!”

"Amen!" roared out the old man. "Go on. You really believe in it? Come here, Barton, sit down on the edge of the bed, look me in the face, and no flummery, do you really believe that there's another world?”

I do, Tommy; I believe it in my very soul!"

"That's enough; I believe it too, just as sartain as if a shipmate had told me about an island I'd never seen, but he had."

"Now, Barton, give me the bearin's of't. D'ye believe that there's a Lord that helps a poor feller to it?"

66

"I do. Christ loves me, and you, and all of us. He is glorious in love; and for no other reason in the world than because He loves to do kind things, He saves all who trust Him."

He

"He don't stand on particulars, then? won't rip up all a feller's old faults, will he ?—or how's that? Don't you ease up on me, Barton, just to please me, but tell me the hardest on't. I believe every word you say."

Barton's own soul had travelled on the very road on which Tommy was now walking, and remembering his own experience, and some of those wonderful crystals which he had dug out of the ridges of the Old Testament, and which he had set in his memory with even more feeling than before, made up in part by the renewal of his own former experiences, he repeated to Tommy these words, saying to him:

66

Tommy, if I was describing a man to you, you would take him to be just what I say, wouldn't you?"

"Sartain!"

'Well, this is God's nature. You are going toward him, and ought to know how to behave."

"That's as true as the compass. Didn't I tell ye, old woman, when Barton came it would be plain sailin'?"

"And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, the LORD, the LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.

66 6

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.'-Exodus, xxxiv. 8, 9.

"Then again, Tommy, hear this:

"Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the last of his heritage? he retained not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.

"He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.' -Micah, vii. 18, 19.

"Now that's to the p'int, Barton. The Lord will tumble a feller's sins overboard like rubbish, or bilge-water and the like, when a ship is in the