eighteen was eager enough to go to the scene of such a shipwreck. It was a sad sight. Among them was a woman, and they said a little baby was saved. Yes, let me think,

I am sure the baby lived, and Ephraim Wright took it for his own. My uncle moved away, and I have never been there since."

Thus pursuing the train of his own recollections, the captain did not observe their effect on his companion, till he felt a convulsive grasp on his arm, and heard him gasp out,

"A woman! a baby! - for God's sake tell me more."

"There is little more to tell; the schooner was an utter wreck, but they found some pieces of the name, and Ephraim was sure he made her out to be the Jane and Eliza of Halifax. She was so reported among the casualties, but I have never heard any thing more about her."

Dr. Manning turned and went into the cabin. A little time after Captain Sargent followed him and found him seated by the

table with his head in his hands, buried in thought. He was alarmed at his paleness and evident suffering, and begged for an explanation. "Captain Sargent," said he, " that woman was my wife."

ment.

The Captain listened to his story in amazeSlowly and with effort the doctor began. "I am a younger son of a respectable English family. I studied medicine and became a surgeon in the army. I was sent with my regiment to America, and stationed at Halifax. I was then a young man and went freely into society. I met there a beautiful young girl from Massachusetts; she was on a visit to relatives in Halifax. Attracted by her sweetness and beauty, I soon became her lover, and she returned my affection. Her mother was dead, and her father had married a second time. She had no other very near relatives at home, except an aged aunt of whom she was very fond. Under these circumstances I obtained her consent to a marriage in Halifax, as it was extremely difficult for me to leave the regiment. Her aunt did

not seriously object, and her father, absorbed in new interests, gave his consent without much difficulty. We were married and lived two years in Halifax. Our baby was born there and named after my mother Eugenia. We were happy; there is not a cloud on that picture." He took from his bosom a daguerrotype and handed it to the Captain. It was the young mother and her baby. "The art was in its infancy then," he continued, “but it has been a treasure to me."

Captain Sargent's eyes filled with tears, as he looked on the sweet girlish face, and then on the careworn man before him, and thought of them as a young couple together.

"At the end of two years," continued Dr. Manning," our regiment was suddenly ordered back to England, with a prospect that we should be sent to India, in the spring. My wife could not go with me in the same ship, for it would be crowded; and the orders allowed no officers to take their wives. She was, besides, very anxious to see her aunt once more, and it was decided that she should go

with her babe to Massachusetts for the winter, and rejoin me early in the spring and go to India with me. She lingered with me to the last moment, and her cousin in Halifax promised most faithfully to provide for her a good passage. He was himself going in a new schooner to Boston, and he considered it the safest possible conveyance for her. We parted, not without tears and anguish, but still with the sanguine confidence of youth that a few months would re-unite us.

"Arrived in England, our regiment was ordered from place to place, and for some time the failure of her letters was attributed to this cause. I wrote to her cousin in Halifax in vain. At length I got a letter from some other hand, telling me briefly and coldly that my wife and child had taken passage with her cousin in the schooner 'Jane and Eliza,' that she was wrecked on the coast of Massachusetts and all hands lost. At the time I received this letter, I was already prostrated by a cruel wound in my head, from a fall from my horse. The result was a severe

brain fever, whose effects almost paralyzed my mental energies for many months. When I recovered, our regiment was ordered to the Crimea. In despair of my own happiness, I gladly accepted this opportunity of using my poor remnant of life, in a scene of excitement and labor. We had enough to do in the hospitals as you well know, and at the peace I was fairly worn out in body. But the constant activity for others, had been of mental benefit to me. However desolate my heart was, I now felt that life was valuable for its meaning and its uses. I left the army, and having by the bequest of relations a small property, I devoted myself to travel and scientific pursuits. The investigation of the causes and cure of disease, and other subjects connected with human welfare, have occupied my time, and I have looked confidently forward to a reunion with my wife and child in Heaven. But of late a longing seized me to visit the home of my wife's girlhood, that dear old Massachusetts of which she used to talk so much. I knew that her old aunt was