The dawn was scarcely breaking as Tony Butler awoke and set off to visit the ships in the port whose flags proclaimed them English. There were full thirty, of various sizes and rigs; but though many were deficient in hands, no skipper seemed disposed to accept a young fellow who, if he was stalwart and well grown, so palpably pertained to a class to which hard work and coarse usage were strangers.

“You ain't anything of a cook, are you?” asked one of the very few who did not reject his demand at once.

“No,” said he, smiling.

“Them hands of yours might do something in the caboose, but they ain't much like reefing and clewing topsails. Won't suit me.” And, thus discouraged, he went on from one craft to the other, surprised and mortified to discover that one of the resources he had often pictured to his mind in the hours of despondency was just as remote, just as much above him, as any of the various callings his friends had set before him.

“Not able to be even a sailor! Not fit to serve before the mast! Well, perhaps I can carry a musket; but for that I must return to England.”

He fell to thinking of this new scheme, but without any of that hope that had so often colored his projects. He owed the service a grudge. His father had not been fairly treated in it So, at least, from his very childhood, had his mother taught him to believe, and, in consequence, vehemently opposed all his plans to obtain a commission. Hard necessity, however, left no room for mere scruples; something he must do, and that something was narrowed to the one single career of a soldier.

He was practical enough in a certain sense, and he soon resolved on his line of action; he would reserve just so much as would carry him back to England, and remit the remainder of what he had to his mother.

This would amount to nigh eighty pounds,—a very considerable sum to one whose life was as inexpensive as hers. The real difficulty was how to reconcile her to the thought of his fallen condition, and the hardships she would inevitably associate in her mind with his future life. “Ain't I lucky,” cried he in his bitterness, and trying to make it seem like a consolation,—“ain't I lucky, that, except my poor dear mother, I have not one other in the whole world to care what comes to me,—none other to console, none other before whom I need plead or excuse myself! My failure or my disgrace are not to spread a widecast sorrow. They will only darken one fireside, and one figure in the corner of it.”

His heart was full of Alice all the while, but he was too proud to utter her name even to himself. To have made a resolve, however, seemed to rally his courage again; and when the boatman asked him where he should go next, he was so far away in his thoughts that he had some difficulty to remember what he had been actually engaged in.

“Whereto?”

“Well, I can't well tell you,” said he, laughing. “Isn't that schooner English,—that one getting underway yonder? Shove me aboard of her.”

“She's outward bound, sir.”

“No matter, if they 'll agree to take me,” muttered he to himself.

The craft was “hauling short” on the anchor as Tony came alongside and learned that she was about to sail for Leghorn, having failed in obtaining a freight at Naples; and as by an accident one of the crew had been left on shore, the skipper was too willing to take Tony so far, though looking, as he remarked, far more like a swell landsman than an ordinary seaman.

Once outside the bay, and bowling along with a smart breeze and a calm sea, the rushing water making pleasant music at the bow, while the helm left a long white track some feet down beneath the surface, Tony felt, what so many others have felt, the glorious elation of being at sea. How many a care “blue water” can assuage, how many a sorrow is made bearable by the fresh breeze that strains the cordage, and the laughing waves we cleave through so fast!

A few very eventful days, in which Tony's life passed less like reality than a mere dream, brought them to Leghorn; and the skipper, who had taken a sort of rough liking to the “Swell,” as he still called him, offered to take him on to Liverpool, if he were willing to enter himself regularly on the ship's books as one of the crew.

“I am quite ready,” said Tony, who thought by the time the brief voyage was completed he should have picked up enough of the practice and the look of a sailor to obtain another employment easily.

Accompanied by the skipper, he soon found himself in the consul's office, crowded with sailors and other maritime folk, busily engaged in preferring complaints or making excuses, or as eagerly asking for relief against this or that exaction on the part of the foreign government.

The consul sat smoking his cigar with a friend at a window, little heeding the turmoil around, but leaving the charge of the various difficulties to his clerks, who only referred to him on some special occasions.

“Here's a man, sir,” cried one of the clerks, “who wishes to be entered in the ship's books under an assumed name. I have told him it can't be done.”

“Why does he ask it? Is he a runaway convict?” asked the consul.

“Not exactly,” said Tony, laughing; “but as I have not been brought up before the mast, and I have a few relatives who might not like to hear of me in that station—”

“A scamp, I take,” broke in the consul, “who, having done his worst on shore, takes to the sea for a refuge?”

“Partly right,—partly wrong,” was the dry answer.

“Well, my smart fellow, there 's no help for it. You must give your name and your birthplace; and if they should prove false ones, take any consequences that might result.”

“What sort of consequences might these be?” asked Tony, calmly; and the consul, having either spoken without any distinct knowledge attached to his words, or provoked by the pertinacity of the question, half irritably answered: “I 've no time to throw away in discussing casualties; give your name or go your way.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured the skipper. “Who knows anything about you down here?—Just sign the sheet and let's be moving.”

The sort of good-humored tone and look that went with the words decided Tony, and he took the pen and wrote “Tony Butler, Ireland.”

The consul glanced at the writing, and said, “What part of Ireland? Name a town or a village.”

“I cannot; my father was a soldier, quartered in various places, and I 'm not sure in what part of the island I was born.”

“Tony Butler means Anthony Butler, I suppose?”

“Tony Butler!” cried the consul's friend, suddenly starting up, and coming forward; “did you say your name was Tony Butler?”

“Yes; that is my name.”

“And are you from the North of Ireland,—near the Causeway?”

Tony nodded, while a flush of shame at the recognition covered his face.

“And do you know Dr. Stewart, the Presbyterian minister in that neighborhood?”

“I should think so. The Burnside, where he lives, is not above a mile from us.”

“That's it,—the Burnside,—that's the name of it. I'm as glad as fifty pounds in my pocket to see you, Mr. Butler,” cried he, grasping Tony's hand in both his own. “There 's not a man from this to England I 'd as soon have met as yourself. I 'm Sam M'Grader, Robert M'Grader's brother. You have n't forgot him, I hope?”

“That I haven't,” cried Tony, warmly returning the honest pressure of the other's hand. “What a stupid dog I have been not to remember that you lived here! and I have a letter for you, too, from your brother!”

“I want no letter of introduction with you, Mr. Butler; come home with me. You 're not going to sea this time;” and, taking a pen, he drew a broad line of ink across Tony's name; and then turning, he whispered a few words in the consul's ear.

“I hope,” said the consul, “Mr. Butler is not offended at the freedom with which I commented on him.”

“Not in the least,” said Tony, laughing. “I thought at the time, if you knew me you would not have liked to have suggested my having been a runaway convict; and now that you do know me, the shame you feel is more than enough to punish you.”

“What could have induced you to go before the mast, Mr. Butler?” said M'Gruder, as he led Tony away.

“Sheer necessity. I wanted to earn my bread.”

“But you had got something,—some place or other?”

“I was a messenger, but I lost my despatches, and was ashamed to go home and say so.”

“Will you stop with me? Will you be a clerk?” asked the other; and a certain timidity in his voice showed that he was not quite assured as he spoke. “My business is like my brother's,—we 're 'in rags.'”.

“And so should I be in a few days,” laughed out Tony, “if I had n't met you. I 'll be your clerk, with a heart and a half,—that is, if I be capable; only don't give me anything where money enters, and as little writing as possible, and no arithmetic, if you can help it.”

“That will be a strange sort of clerkship,” said M'Gruder, with a smile; “but we 'll see what can be done.”