or could sympathise with his gloomy feelings. Frank was always delighted when they happened to be of the same watch, and then the two boys used to pace the deck for hours together, and talk of their widowed mothers and their beloved relations; they were both unhappy, but the grief of the one was the virtuous devotion of an affectionate child, that of the other the remorse of a repentant offender.

The first port for which the Syren was to sail was Genoa, where she was to join the squadron of the Admiral, and return with him to Malta. In consequence of contrary winds, it was the end of October ere she reached the first point of her destination, and early in November she again sailed for Leghorn; hence, after a delay of a few days, she went on to Naples, and finally, about the beginning of January, she came to anchor in the harbour of La Valetta, in the Island of Malta, where she remained three or four weeks before sailing on a second cruise.

CHAPTER XI.

ABSENT FRIENDS.-LETTERS.-CRUISE.-AN

ADVENTURE.

With trembling hand the yielding seal he bursts,
Fearful yet fain to glance upon the lines,

That speak perchance of joy, perchance of grief,
But surely tell of absence and of pain.

EDWARD Gardner.

THE morning of Frank's departure was a melancholy one at Elm Grove; his mother listened till the last sound of the chaise that conveyed him away had ceased, and then she and Emily sat down by the lonely fireside and gave free vent to their grief. They were now solitary, and henceforward their lives were to be spent apart from him who had once been the

joy of their hearts; to them poor Frank was virtually lost for ever; long years were to elapse ere the Syren was to return to England, and perhaps it was a startling thought-but perhaps she might never return again. The plans of happiness which each had been forming for years, were now all dashed to the ground-they were to commence a new life henceforward. Frank was to enter no more into their schemes of domestic happiness, and one short year had effected all this: but twelve months before, he was so merry, and contented, and joyful, that his mother had never once dreamed of a separation; he was now gone, and to her gone for ever. Every object on which she cast her eyes had an altered look ; the parlour was silent and lonely, and it almost broke her heart when she would enter Frank's bed-room, the bed was turned down, and the white napkins were laid upon the table, but ah! where was he who should use them? The garden looked deserted in the mornings

when she came down to breakfast, for she could not see her light-hearted boy working as he used to do at his own little flower-plot; and in the evenings, when she sat at the window, with Emily reading or working beside her, her ear no longer heard the glad shouts of Frank and his school-fellows, as he sported in the avenue and the lawn before her. She could not now lean on the arm of her manly son, as she paced, with a heavy heart, the pathway to the once loved church; and, as she passed the grave of her husband, a thousand busy recollections would so crowd upon her, that, for some time after she was seated in the pew, she could with difficulty collect her thoughts, or remember where she was. When she walked down to the village, the boys, as they chased each other over the green, would force her to sigh and to think of her son; and if by chance one of his former cheerful comrades came running up to her to ask if she had heard any

thing from dear Frank, it was with difficulty that her swelling heart would permit her to answer them distinctly: the fields seemed less green and gay than they used to be, and in her eyes the very sky was more gloomy than formerly. On many an evening, when it was too dark for her to sew, and her mind was too melancholy to permit her to read, she would sit by the window and watch the bright sun setting behind the hills, and think if Frank was looking at it too, and wonder in what far distant quarter of the world her poor orphan boy was then moving; and when night had closed in, and all grew dark around her, she would retire from the window, and sit down with Emily to repeat, for the thousandth time, the same hopes and the same wishes for his happiness and safety. Emily's health was not improving, and continual loneliness and grief were a great drawback to her recovery. She used to steal out when her mother was occu