was a year since he had heard from his friends, and five years since he had seen them.  Who could tell what changes had taken place in that time?  Who could tell whether poor John had even lived to be killed by the pressgang?  His father, his mother, and his sisters—­were they dead, were they living, were they sick, or in health?  His sister had been always a delicate girl, one of those gentle and fragile flowers of mortality that are sure not to live till the summer; perhaps consumption, with the deceitful beauty of his smile, had already led his fair partner down the short dance of life.

Tormenting himself with such speculations, he arrived at his father’s house.  Here he was surprised, bewildered, almost shocked, to observe a new and handsome farm-house in place of the old one.  On looking farther on, however, he did detect the ancient habitation of his family, in its original site; but it seemed, from the distance where he stood, to be falling into ruins.  His whole race must either be dead or banished, and a new tribe of successors settled in their place; or else uncle William must be deceased, and have left his father money enough to build a new house.  He walked up to the door, where he stood trembling for some minutes, without courage to put his hand to the latch, and at last went round to the window, and, with a desperate effort, looked in.  How his heart bounded!  His father was there, still a stout healthy man of middle life, his hair hardly beginning to be grizzled, by the meddling finger of the old painter Time; and his mother, as handsome as ever, and her face relieved by the smile either of habitual happiness, or of some momentary cause of joyful excitation, from the Madonna cast which had distinguished it in less prosperous days; and his sister, with only enough left of her former delicacy of complexion to chasten the luxuriant freshness of health on the ripe cheeks of nineteen.  John, indeed, was not there; but a vacant chair stood by the table ready to receive him, and another—­a second chair, beside it, only nearer the fire—­for whom?—­for himself.  His heart told him that it was.  Some one must have brought the tidings of his arrival; the family circle were at that moment waiting to receive him; he could see his old letters lying on the table before them, and recognised the identical red splash he had dropped, as if accidentally, on the corner of one—­the dispatch he had written after his first action—­although he had taken the trouble to go to the cock-pit to procure, for the occasion, this valorous token of danger and glory.  But John—­it was so late for him to be from home!—­and, as a new idea passed across his mind, he turned his eyes upon the old house, which was distant about a hundred yards.  It was probable, he thought, nay, more than probable, that his father, when circumstances enabled him to build a new house for himself, had given the old one to his eldest son; and John, doubtless, was established there as the master of the family, and perhaps at this moment was waiting anxiously for a message to require his presence on the joyful occasion of his brother’s arrival.  He did not calculate very curiously time or ages, for his brother was only his senior by two years; he felt that he was himself a man long ago, and thought that John by this time must be almost an old man.