Sandy went to his room and sat in his window, watching a tiny light that flickered, far across the valley, in the last bend of the river before it left the town.

His muscles were tense, his nerves a-tingle, as he strained his eyes in the darkness to keep watch of the beacon.

It was the last glimpse of home to a sailor who expected never to return.
Down in the sitting-room the judge was lost in the pages of a worn old copy of Tom Moore.

He fingered the pages with a tenderness of other days, and lingered over the forgotten lines with a half-quizzical, half-sad smile on his lips.

For he had been a lover once, and Sandy's romance stirred dead leaves in his heart that sent up a faint perfume of memory.
"Yes," he mused half aloud; "I marked that one too: "Be it bliss to remember that thou wert the star That arose on his darkness and guided him home.".