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Margaret nodded, as one should say, There’s a many Larrys in the world.

“But the oddest part of it,” continued Mr. Bilkins, in a carelessly sepulchral voice, “is the man’s last name.”

Something in the tone of his voice made Margaret look at him, and something in the expression of his face caused the blood to fly from Margaret’s cheek.

“The man’s last name!” she repeated, wonderingly.

“Yes, his last name–O’Rourke.”

“D’ye mane it?” shrieked Margaret–“d’ ye mane it? Glory to God! O worra! worra!”

“Well, Ezra,” said Mrs. Bilking, in one of those spasms of base ingratitude to which even the most perfect women are liable, “you ‘ve made nice work of it. You might as well have knocked her down with an axe!”

“But, my dear”–

“Oh, bother!–my smelling-bottle, quick!–second bureau drawer–left-hand side.”

Joy never kills; it is a celestial kind of hydrogen of which it seems impossible to get too much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret was able to converse with comparative calmness on the resuscitation of Larry O’Rourke, whom the firing of a cannon had brought to the surface as if he had been in reality a drowned body.

Now that the whole town was aware of Mr. O’Rourke’s fate, his friend Mr. Donne-hugh came forward with a statement that would have been of some interest at an earlier period, but was of no service as matters stood, except so far as it assisted in removing from Mr. Bilkins’s mind a passing doubt as to whether the Larry O’Rourke of the telegraphic reports was Margaret’s scape-grace of a husband. Mr. Donnehugh had known all along that O’Rourke had absconded to Boston by a night train and enlisted in the navy. It was the possession of this knowledge that had made it impossible for Mr. Donnehugh to look at Mr. O’Rourke’s gravestone without grinning.

At Margaret’s request, and in Margaret’s name, Mr. Bilkins wrote three or four letters to O’Rourke, and finally succeeded in extorting an epistle from that gentleman, in which he told Margaret to cheer up, that his fortune was as good as made, and that the day would come when she should ride through the town in her own coach, and no thanks to old flint-head, who pretended to be so fond of her. Mr. Bilkins tried to conjecture who was meant by old flint-head, but was obliged to give it up. Mr. O’Rourke furthermore informed Margaret that he had three hundred dollars prize-money coming to him, and broadly intimated that when he got home he intended to have one of the most extensive blow-outs ever witnessed in Rivermouth.

“Och!” laughed Margaret, “that’s jist Larry over agin. The pore lad was allus full of his nonsense an’ spirits.”

“That he was,” said Mr. Bilkins, dryly.

Content with the fact that her husband was in the land of the living, Margaret gave herself no trouble over the separation. O’Rourke had shipped for three years; one third of his term of service was past, and two years more, God willing, would see him home again. This was Margaret’s view of it. Mr. Bilkins’s view of it was not so cheerful The prospect of Mr. O’Rourke’s ultimate return was anything but enchanting. Mr. Bilkins was by no means disposed to kill the fatted calf. He would much rather have killed the Prodigal Son. However, there was always this chance: he might never come back.

The tides rose and fell at the Rivermouth wharves; the summer moonlight and the winter snow, in turn, bleached its quiet streets; and the two years had nearly gone by. In the mean time nothing had been heard of O’Rourke. If he ever received the five or six letters sent to him, he did not fatigue himself by answering them.

“Larry’s all right,” said hopeful Margaret. “If any harum had come to the gossoon, we’d have knowed it. It’s the bad news that travels fast.”

Mr. Bilkins was not so positive about that. It had taken a whole year to find out that O’Rourke had not drowned himself.