“Mr. Crabbe’s fourth brother, William, taking to a sea-faring life, was made prisoner by the Spaniards.  He was carried to Mexico, where he became a silversmith, married, and prospered, until his increasing riches attracted a charge of Protestantism; the consequence of which was much persecution.  He at last was obliged to abandon Mexico, his property, and his family; and was discovered in the year 1803 by an Aldeburgh sailor on the coast of Honduras, where again he seems to have found some success in business.  This sailor was the only person he had seen for many a year who could tell him anything about Aldeburgh and his family, and great was his perplexity when he was informed that his eldest brother, George, was a clergyman.  ’This cannot be our George,’ said the wanderer, ’he was a Doctor!  This was the first, and it was also the last, tidings that ever reached Mr. Crabbe of his brother William; and upon the Aldeburgh sailor’s story of his casual interview, it is obvious that he built this tale.”

The story as developed by Crabbe is pathetic and picturesque, reminding us in its central interest of Enoch Arden.  Allen Booth, the youngest son of his parents dwelling in a small seaport, falls early in love with a child schoolfellow, for whom his affection never falters.  When grown up the young man accepts an offer from a prosperous kinsman in the West Indies to join him in his business.  His beloved sees him depart with many misgivings, though their mutual devotion was never to fade.  She does not see him again for forty years, when he returns, like Arden, to his “native bay,”

  “A worn-out man with wither’d limbs and lame,
  His mind oppress’d with woes, and bent with age his frame.”

He finds his old love, who had been faithful to her engagement for ten years, and then (believing Allen to be dead) had married.  She is now a widow, with grown-up children scattered through the world, and is alone.  Allen then tells his sad story.  The ship in which he sailed from England had been taken by the Spaniards, and he had been carried a slave to the West Indies, where he worked in a silver mine, improved his position under a kind master, and finally married a Spanish girl, hopeless of ever returning to England though still unforgetful of his old love.  He accumulates money, and, like Crabbe’s brother, incurs the envy of his Roman Catholic neighbours.  He is denounced as a heretic, who would doubtless bring up his children in the accursed English faith.  On his refusal to become a Catholic he is expelled the country, as the condition of his life being spared: 

  “His wife, his children, weeping in his sight,
  All urging him to flee, he fled, and cursed his flight.”