on his road to paradise.  The one was a shortish man, coarse of figure, and whose browned features and figured hands bespoke him a sailor; the other was delicate of figure, with pale, careworn countenance and nervous demeanour.  Upon the marble slab, on which they rested their elbows, sat a bottle of old Madeira, from which they sipped leisurely, now and then modulating their conversation into whispers.  Then the man of brown features spoke out more at ease, as if they had concluded the preliminaries of some important business.

“Well, well,—­now isn’t that strange?” said he, sighing as he spread his brawny hands upon the white marble.  “Natur’s a curious mystery, though” (he looked intently at the other):  “why, more nor twenty years have rolled over since I did that bit of a good turn, and here I is the very same old Jack Hardweather, skipper of the Maggy Bell.  But for all that—­and I’d have folks know it!—­the Maggy’s as trim a little craft as ever lay to on a sou’-easter; and she can show as clean a pair of heels as any other—­barring her old top timbers complain now and then—­to the best cutter as ever shook Uncle Sam’s rags.”  His hard features softened, as in the earnest of his heart he spoke.  He extended his hand across the table, grasping firmly that of his nervous friend, and continued—­“And it was no other witch than the taunt Maggy Bell that landed that good woman safe on the free sands of old Bahama!” The Maggy, he tells the other, is now at the wharf, where the good wife, Molly Hardweather, keeps ship while the boys take a turn ashore.

“There’s always a wise provision to relieve one’s feelings when sorrow comes unexpectedly,” returns the nervous man, his hand trembling as he draws forth the money to pay the waiter who answered his call.

“Yes!” quickly rejoined the other, “but keep up a good heart, like a sailor hard upon a lee shore, and all ’ll be bright and sunny in a day or two.  And now we’ll just make a tack down the bay-street-and sight the Maggy.  There’s a small drop of somethin’ in the locker, that’ll help to keep up yer spirits, I reckon—­a body’s spirits has to be tautened now and then, as ye do a bobstay,—­and the wife (she’s a good sort of a body, though I say it) will do the best she can in her hard way to make ye less troubled at heart.  Molly Hardweather has had some hard ups and downs in life, knows well the cares of a mother, and has had twins twice; yes"-adds the hardy seafarer-"we arn’t polished folks, nor high of blood, but we’ve got hearts, and as every true heart hates slavery, so do we, though we are forced to dissemble our real feelings for the sake of peace in the trade.”  Here the delicate man took the sailor’s arm, and sallied out to seek the little Maggy Bell, the former saying the meeting was as strange as grateful to his very soul.  Down Market Street, shaded in darkness, they wended their way, and after reaching the wharf, passed along between long lines of cotton bales, piled eight and ten feet high, to the end,