CHAPTER XVIII.
"Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The lighthouse-top I see?
Is this the hill?
Is this the Kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
We drifted o'er the harbour bar, And I with sobs did pray-- O let me be awake, my GOD! Or let me sleep alway." _The Ancient Mariner_.
When Alister joined us the first evening after we came back from poor Biddy, he was so deeply interested in hearing about her, that he would have gone with us the next morning, if he had not had business on hand.
He had a funny sort of remorse for having misjudged her the day she befooled the sentry to get me off.

Business connected with Biddy's death detained Dennis in Liverpool for a day or two, and as I had not given any warning of the date of my return to my people, I willingly stayed with him.

My comrades had promised to go home with me before proceeding on their respective ways, but (in answer to the letter which announced his safe arrival in Liverpool) Alister got a message from his mother summoning him to Scotland at once on important family matters, and the Shamrock fell to pieces sooner than we had intended.

In the course of a few days, Dennis and I heard from our old comrade.
"The Braes of Buie.
"MY DEAR JACK AND DENNIS: I am home safe and sound, though not in time for the funeral, which (as partly consequent on the breaking of a tube in one engine, and a trifling damage to the wheels of a second that was attached, if ye understand me, with the purpose of rectifying the deficiencies of the first, the Company being, in my humble judgment, unwisely thrifty in the matter of second-hand boilers) may be regarded as a dispensation of Providence, and was in no degree looked upon by any member of the family as a wanting of respect towards the memory of the deceased.

With the sole and single exception of Miss Margaret MacCantywhapple, a far-away cousin by marriage, who, though in good circumstances, and a very virtuous woman, may be said to have seen her best days, and is not what she was in her intellectual judgment, being afflicted with deafness and a species of palsy, besides other infirmities in her faculties.