exertions of a clergyman of the place. The Home
at Cork was started by another captain in the
navy. Yarmouth opened its Home in 'fifty-eight.
The Southampton people needed a good
deal of prompting and persuading; but when
they did set up their Sailors' Home, in eighteen
'sixty-one, it was an excellent one; and in 'sixty-five
the Mayor, Municipality, and Committee
of the Institution, gave public thanks to Captain
Hall—then Admiral Hall—for the important
service he had done the port in urging and
securing its establishment.

The example set in England has been operative
throughout all her colonies. Sailors'
Homes have been established at Calcutta, Bombay,
Madras, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Kingston
in Jamaica, Mauritius, the Cape, and the ports
of Australia. The indefatigable apostle of a
system which has done incalculable service in
the saving of life, health, worldly well-being,
and other sources of happiness to many thousands
of the men upon whose labour England
depends for no small part of her own wealth, has
begun with his charity at home, but has no wish
that it should stop there. He has also personally
urged the advantage of the Sailors' Home
system upon the French Minister of Marine.

But our own work is not yet half done, and
it is for the good of his own country that
Admiral Hall is still actively working at the head
of an organisation called "the Sailors' Home
Society," which has its office at 6, New Inn-street,
with Mr. John Davies for its Honorary
Secretary, and Admiral Sir William Hall for its
Chairman and Honorary Managing Director.
At this particular time it is hard at work upon
two endeavours. One is, to set up a Home which
is much wanted at Weymouth for the seamen
of the Royal Navy. The other is, to add to
the two Homes, which are all that have been
yet provided by the great and wealthy port of
London, another on the south side of the
Thames, at Rotherhithe. As to the need there,
it is enough to say that at present there is no
such thing as a Sailors' Home to be found on
the south side of the river, where accessible
lodgings are immeasurably squalid, and the
docks—though less important than those of the
north side—receive as much shipping as almost
any port in the kingdom.

THE ABBOT'S POOL.

IN SIX CHAPTERS. CHAPTER V.

     I feared the pitiless rocks of ocean,
       So the great sea rose, and then
    Cast me from her friendly bosom,
      On the pitiless hearts of men.
                                        Miss PROCTOR.

THE room was dimly lighted by a low fire and
a tallow candle, and, besides its usual stuffy
and druggy atmosphere, Mrs. Denbigh was
conscious of a smell of stale tobacco, emanating
apparently from the great arm-chair, where sat,
in an easy lounging attitude, a tall, powerfully-
made man dressed in a loosely-fitting shooting-
jacket. Starting up as Mrs. Denbigh entered,
he displayed a bronzed and reddened face set
in a rough mass of beard and hair, and a pair of
gloveless hands, toil-seamed and weather-beaten.
Mrs. Denbigh might well stand still, half-
alarmed at this uncivilised apparition; and the
stranger also looked somewhat surprised, as if
the fair vision before him, in sweeping black
velvet robes, with heavy silver pendants on
the round throat and in the small ears, were
not quite what he had expected the doctor's
wife to be. In another second he bowed with
a sudden courteous gesture, which assured
Elsie that he was not the ruffian he looked, and,
with a frank pleasant voice, the tones of which
were much more civilised than his appearance
warranted, he said, "I beg your pardon; I am
afraid I have come at a most inconvenient
moment. Mr. Denbigh is not at home, I am
sorry to find?"

"No," said Mrs. Denbigh, standing herself,
and not asking him to sit, as she still felt somewhat
nervous; "I am sorry to say he is in London;
but we expect him home to-morrow, or
the next day, at latest. Could you leave any
message?"

"Thanks—no. I fancy you can tell me
what I want to know as well as he could; it
is only Captain Clavering's address."

Elsie gave a great start, as well she might.
Her first wild idea was, that this stranger was
bent, for some inscrutable reason, on paining
and insulting her by a cruel joke. Next
moment she was able to consider that he
might be some old friend of her first husband,
who did not know that Philip Denbigh's
wife had been Herbert Clavering's widow.
Sudden shame assailed her, as if she had done
something wrong and disgraceful which was on
the point of being discovered; her intense desire
to be quit of her visitor nerved her to answer
collectedly.

"You don't know, then, that he was in the
Amethyst, which was lost seven years ago?"

"Exactly; that's the man. When we parted
at Auckland, he told me that Mr. Denbigh was
his greatest friend, and that if I should chance
at any time not to know his address it was a
sure find to come and look him up here. He
is a great chum of mine. I dare say my name
is familiar to you—Josiah Smith."

There came before Mrs. Denbigh's mind a
sentence in poor Herbert's first letter, in which
he mentioned having given a passage in the
Amethyst to a certain acquaintance, bearing this
name, who wished to make his way to New
Zealand. Shame, distress, the fear of Philip's
jealous anger, and the horrible awkwardness of
her situation, were all forgotten in the chance
of questioning one who had been with her
husband so shortly before his death. She eagerly
exclaimed:

"Oh, yes; I do know your name. Did you
not sail in the Amethyst? And was it long
before the shipwreck that you parted? You
know she was wrecked."

It was the stranger's turn to look surprised.
"Of course she was, the wretched tub; not fit