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The rectified and clarified O’Rourke was a permanent wonder to Mr. Bilkins, who bore up under the bereavement with noticeable resignation.

“Peggy is right,” said the old gentleman, who was superintending the burning out of the kitchen flue. “She won’t find another man like Larry O’Rourke in a hurry.”

“Thrue for ye, Mr. Bilkins,” answered Margaret. “Maybe there’s as good fish in the say as iver was caught, but I don’t be-lave it, all the same.”

As good fish in the sea! The words recalled to Margaret the nature of her loss, and she went on with her work in silence.

*****

“What–what is it, Ezra?” cried Mrs. Bilkins, changing color, and rising hastily from the breakfast table. Her first thought was of apoplexy.

There sat Mr. Bilkins, with his wig pushed back from his forehead, and his eyes fixed vacantly on The Weekly Chronicle, which he held out at arm’s length before him.

“Good heavens, Ezra! what is the matter?”

Mr. Bilkins turned his eyes upon her mechanically, as if he were a great wax-doll, and somebody had pulled his wire.

“Can’t you speak, Ezra?”

His lips opened, and moved inarticulately; then he pointed a rigid finger, in the manner of a guide-board, at a paragraph in the paper, which he held up for Mrs. Bilkins to read over his shoulder. When she had read it she sunk back into her chair without a word, and the two sat contemplating each other as if they had never met before in this world, and were not overpleased at meeting.

The paragraph which produced this singular effect on the aged couple occurred at the end of a column of telegraph despatches giving the details of an unimportant engagement that had just taken place between one of the blockading squadron and a Confederate cruiser. The engagement itself does not concern us, but this item from the list of casualties on the Union side has a direct bearing on our narrative:–

“Larry O’Rourke, seaman, splinter wound in the leg. Not serious.”

That splinter flew far. It glanced from Mr. O’Rourke’s leg, went plumb through the Bilkins mansion, and knocked over a small marble slab in the Old South Burying Ground.

If a ghost had dropped in familiarly to breakfast, the constraint and consternation of the Bilkins family could not have been greater. How was the astounding intelligence to be broken to Margaret? Her explosive Irish nature made the task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly declared herself incapable of undertaking it. Mr. Bilkins, with many misgivings as to his fitness, assumed the duty; for it would never do to have the news sprung suddenly upon Margaret by people outside.

As Mrs. O’Rourke was clearing away the breakfast things, Mr. Bilkins, who had lingered near the window with the newspaper in his hand, coughed once or twice in an unnatural way to show that he was not embarrassed, and began to think that may be it would be best to tell Margaret after dinner. Mrs. Bilkins fathomed his thought with that intuition which renders women terrible, and sent across the room an eye-telegram to this effect, “Now is your time.”

“There ‘s been another battle down South, Margaret,” said the old gentleman presently, folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket. “A sea-fight this time.”

“Sure, an’ they ‘re allus fightin’ down there.”

“But not always with so little damage. There was only one man wounded on our side.”

“Pore man! It’s sorry we oughter be for his wife an’ childer, if he’s got any.”

“Not badly wounded, you will understand, Margaret–not at all seriously wounded; only a splinter in the leg.”

“Faith, thin, a splinter in the leg is no pleasant thing in itself.”

“A mere scratch,” said Mr. Bilkins lightly, as if he were constantly in the habit of going about with a splinter in his own leg, and found it rather agreeable. “The odd part of the matter is the man’s first name. His first name was Larry.”