CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
AT HOME AGAIN.
Sam Pengelly started up, and looked at me as if he thought I was a ghost.
"What, laddie, is it you really ?" he exclaimed, peering into my face with his own, which, usually as florid as a peony, was now all white with emotion; while his lips trembled nervously as he spoke.

"Why," he said, after a close inspection to see whether I was actually Martin Leigh or else some base impostor assuming his voice and guise, "it _is_ the young cockbird, by all that's living--ain't I glad!" And, then, throwing his arms round me in a bear-like hug, he almost squeezed every particle of breath out of my body.
"Now, come along," he said presently, when he could speak again, the kind-hearted fellow's joy choking him at first, and preventing him from uttering a syllable; though he sighed, and drew his breath again in a long sigh like a sob, and finally cleared his throat with a cough that might have been heard on Drake Island.
"Where ?" I asked.
"Why, to Old Calabar Cottage, in course!" he replied, indignantly.

"Do you think Jane won't be glad to see you?
Why, she's been fretting her heart into fiddle-strings arter you all these last six months that you never wrote, thinking you was gone down to Davy Jones's locker!" "I'm very sorry I couldn't write from Melbourne," I said.

"We were so hurried that I had hardly time to get once ashore.

You got my other letters, though, eh ?" "Oh, aye," replied Sam, as we went along the familiar old Stoke road that I knew so well, although it was now so long since I had seen it.
"You've been main good in writin', laddie, an' I don't know what Jane would ha' done without your letters.