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“No,” said the man; “but my folks used to be some of the best in Salem. I haven’t shown my head there this good while. I was an orphan. My grandmother brought me up. Why, I didn’t come back to the States for thirty or forty years. Along at the first of it I used to see men in port that I used to know; but I always dodged ’em, and I was way off in outlandish places. I’ve got an awful sight to answer for. I used to have a good wife when I was in Australia. I don’t know where I haven’t been, first and last. I was always a hard fellow. I’ve spent as much as a couple o’ fortunes, and here I am. Devil take it!”

Nelly was still sewing in the dining-room; but, soon after Miss Dane had gone out to the kitchen, one of the doors between had slowly closed itself with a plaintive whine. The round stone that Melissa used to keep it open had been pushed away. Nelly was a little annoyed: she liked to hear what was going on; but she was just then holding her work with great care in a place that was hard to sew; so she did not move. She heard the murmur of voices, and thought, after a while, that the old vagabond ought to go away by this time. What could be making her cousin Horatia talk so long with him? It was not like her at all. He would beg for money, of course, and she hoped Miss Horatia would not give him a single cent.

It was some time before the kitchen-door opened, and the man came out with clumsy, stumbling steps. “I’m much obliged to you,” he said, “and I don’t know but it is the last time I’ll get treated as if I was a gentleman. Is there any thing I could do for you round the place?” he asked hesitatingly, and as if he hoped that his offer would not be accepted.

“No,” answered Miss Dane. “No, thank you. Good-by!” and he went away.

I said he had been lifted a little above his low life; he fell back again directly before he was out of the gate. “I’m blessed if she didn’t give me a ten-dollar bill!” said he. “She must have thought it was one. I’ll get out o’ call as quick as I can, hope she won’t find it out, and send anybody after me.” Visions of unlimited drinks, and other things in which the old sailor found pleasure, flitted through his stupid mind. “How the old lady stared at me once!” he thought. “Wonder if she was anybody I used to know? ‘Downton?’ I don’t know as I ever heard of the place.” And he scuffed along the dusty road; and that night he was very drunk, and the next day he went wandering on, God only knows where.

But Nelly and Melissa both had heard a strange noise in the kitchen, as if some one had fallen, and had found that Miss Horatia had fainted dead away. It was partly the heat, she said, when she saw their anxious faces as she came to herself; she had had a little headache all the morning; it was very hot and close in the kitchen, and the faintness had come upon her suddenly. They helped her walk into the cool parlor presently, and Melissa brought her a glass of wine, and Nelly sat beside her on a footstool as she lay on the sofa, and fanned her. Once she held her cheek against Miss Horatia’s hand for a minute, and she will never know as long as she lives what a comfort she was that day.

Every one but Miss Dane forgot the old sailor-tramp in this excitement that followed his visit. Do you guess already who he was? But the certainty could not come to you with the chill and horror it did to Miss Dane. There had been something familiar in his look and voice from the first, and then she had suddenly known him, her lost lover. It was an awful change that the years had made in him. He had truly called himself a wreck: he was like some dreary wreck in its decay and utter ruin, its miserable ugliness and worthlessness, falling to pieces in the slow tides of a lifeless southern sea.