the various coach-offices in London. She also referred the lawyers to two of Dermody’s relatives, who lived in the city, and who might know something of his movements after he left my father’s service. When she had done this, she had done all that lay in her power. We neither of us possessed money enough to advertise in the newspapers.     

       A week afterward we sailed for the United States. Twice in that interval I communicated with the lawyers; and twice I was informed that the inquiries had led to nothing.     

       With this the first epoch in my love story comes to an end.     

       For ten long years afterward I never again met with my little Mary; I never even heard whether she had lived to grow to womanhood or not. I still kept the green flag, with the dove worked on it. For the rest, the waters of oblivion had closed over the old golden days at Greenwater Broad.     

  

       CHAPTER V. MY STORY.     

       WHEN YOU last saw me, I was a boy of thirteen. You now see me a man of twenty-three.     

       The story of my life, in the interval between these two ages, is a story that can be soon told.     

       Speaking of my father first, I have to record that the end of his career did indeed come as Dame Dermody had foretold it. Before we had been a year in America, the total collapse of his land speculation was followed by his death. The catastrophe was complete. But for my mother’s little income       (settled on her at her marriage) we should both have been left helpless at the mercy of the world.     

       We made some kind friends among the hearty and hospitable people of the United States, whom we were unaffectedly sorry to leave. But there were reasons which inclined us to return to our own country after my father’s death; and we did return accordingly.     

       Besides her brother-in-law (already mentioned in the earlier pages of my narrative), my mother had another relative—a cousin named Germaine—on whose assistance she mainly relied for starting me, when the time came, in a professional career. I remember it as a family rumor, that Mr. Germaine had been an unsuccessful suitor for my mother’s hand in the days when they were young people 

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