on the deck to breathe my last, hoping I should die before I went quite mad with thirst, when all at once the fog lifted, like the foot of a sail.  I sprung to my feet.  There was the blue sky overhead; but the terrible burning sun was there.  A moment more and a light air blew on my cheek, and, turning my face to it as if it had been the very breath of God, there was an island within half a mile, and I saw the shine of water on the face of a rock on the shore.  I cried out, ‘Land on the weather-quarter!  Water in sight!’ In a moment more a boat was lowered, and in a few minutes the boat’s crew, of which I was one, were lying, clothes and all, in a little stream that came down from the hills above.—­There, Mr Walton! that’s what I wanted to say to you.”

This is as near the story of my old friend as my limited knowledge of sea affairs allows me to report it.

“I understand you quite, Old Rogers, and I thank you heartily,” I said.

“No doubt,” resumed he, “King Solomon was quite right, as he always was, I suppose, in what he said, for his wisdom mun ha’ laid mostly in the tongue—­right, I say, when he said, ’Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;’ but I can’t help thinking there’s another side to it.  I think it would be as good advice to a man on the other tack, whose boasting lay far to windward, and he close on a lee-shore wi’ breakers—­it wouldn’t be amiss to say to him, ’Don’t strike your colours to the morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’  There’s just as many good days as bad ones; as much fair weather as foul in the days to come.  And if a man keeps up heart, he’s all the better for that, and none the worse when the evil day does come.  But, God forgive me!  I’m talking like a heathen.  As if there was any chance about what the days would bring forth.  No, my lad,” said the old sailor, assuming the dignity of his superior years under the inspiration of the truth, “boast nor trust nor hope in the morrow.  Boast and trust and hope in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him, who is the health of thy countenance and thy God.”

I could but hold out my hand.  I had nothing to say.  For he had spoken to me as an angel of God.

The old man was silent for some moments:  his emotion needed time to still itself again.  Nor did he return to the subject.  He held out his hand once more, saying—­

“Good day, sir.  I must go back to my work.”

“I will go back with you,” I returned.

And so we walked back side by side to the village, but not a word did we speak the one to the other, till we shook hands and parted upon the bridge, where we had first met.  Old Rogers went to his work, and I lingered upon the bridge.  I leaned upon the low parapet, and looked up the stream as far as the mists creeping about the banks, and hovering in thinnest veils over the surface of the water, would permit.  Then I turned and looked down the river