I laughed at him.

“What have you been dreaming about?”

“Don’t laugh, Jack.  I dreamt of Barney.”

“Well, that’s natural enough, Dennis.  This end of the voyage must recall the poor fellow.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it was a kindly dream.  But I dreamed he’d an old woman’s bonnet on and a handkerchief tied over it.  It haunts me.”

“Go back to bed,” I advised.  “Perhaps you’ll dream of him again looking like himself, and that will put this out of your head.”

Dennis took my advice, and I stood Alister’s watch with him, and by and by Dennis appeared on deck again looking more at ease.

“Did you dream of him again?” I asked.  He nodded.

“I did—­just his own dear self.  But he was sitting alone on the edge of some wharf gazing down into the water, and not a look could I get out of him till I woke.”

The following morning Dennis was still sound asleep when I rose and went on deck.  The coast of Ireland was just coming into sight through the haze when he joined me, but before pointing it out to him, I felt curious to know whether he had dreamed a third time of old Barney.

“Not I,” said he; “all I dreamed of was a big rock standing up out of the sea, and two children sitting on it had hold of each other’s hands.”

“Children you know?”

“Oh dear, no!  Just a little barefoot brother and sister.”

He seemed to wish to drop the subject, and at this moment a gleam of sunshine lit up the distant coast-line with such ethereal tints, that I did not wonder to see him spring upon the bulwarks and, catching a ratlin with one hand, wave his cap above his head with the other, crying, “GOD bless the Emerald Isle!”

We reached Liverpool about four o’clock in the afternoon, and as we drew up alongside of the old wharf, my first thought was to look for Biddy Macartney.  Alister had to remain on board for a time, but Dennis came willingly with me in search of the old woman and her coffee-barrow.  At last we betook ourselves to the dock-gatekeeper, to make inquiries, and from him we heard a sad story.  The old woman had “failed a deal of late,” he said.  He “had heard she wasn’t right in her mind, but whether they’d shifted her to a ’sylum or not, he couldn’t say.”  If she was at home, she was at an address which he gave us.

“Will you go, Dennis?  I must.  At once.”

“Of course.”

Biddy was at home, and never whilst I live can I forget the “home.”  Four blocks of high houses enclosed a small court into which there was one entrance, an archway through one of the buildings.  All the houses opened into the court.  There were no back-doors, and no back premises whatever.  All the dirt and (as to washing) all the cleanliness of a crowded community living in rooms in flats, the quarrelling and the love-making, the old people’s resting, and the children’s playing;—­from emptying a slop-pail to getting a breath of evening air—­this court was all there was for it.  I have since been told that if we had been dressed like gentlemen, we should not have been safe in it, but I do not think we should have met with any worse welcome if we had come on the same errand—­“to see old Biddy Macartney.”