The merchant's head became gray, but his gigantic frame was as straight and his step as firm as ever.

His wife, strange to say, looked younger as she grew older! It seemed as if she were recovering from some terrible illness that had made her prematurely old, and were now renewing her youth.

The business prospered to such an extent that, by becoming altogether too wonderful, it ceased to be a matter of wonder altogether to the merchants of the Green Isle.

They regarded it as semi-miraculous,--the most unprecedented case of "luck" that had ever been heard of in the annals of mercantile history.
But the rich merchant still dwelt in the humble, almost mean cottage, and still wrought as an engineer and shipwright with his own hands.
In the little cottage beside his own there were soon seen (and _heard_) three stout children, two boys and a girl, the former being named respectively Gascoyne and Henry, the latter Mary.

It is needless to say that these were immense favorites with the eccentric merchant.
During all this time there was a firm in Liverpool which received periodical remittances of money from an unknown source.