can the poor boy be drowned? For, if so, what is to become of me, and I a widow?"
"Mrs. De Witt," said Rebow, helping himself to some rum, "you may as well make your mind easy on this point. If George be not dead where can he be?"
"That I do not take on myself to say."
"He is nowhere on Mersea, is he?"
"Certainly not."
"He did not go along the Colchester road beyond the Strood?"
"No, or I should have heard of him.
"Moreover, he told me he purposed going to the Ray."
"To be sure he did."
"And he never reached the Ray."
"No, for certain."
"Then it is obvious he must have been lost between Mersea and the Ray."
"There is something in what you say Elijah; there is what we may term argument in it."
"There was a reason why he should go to the Ray."
"I suppose there was."
"He had quarrelled with Glory, and desired to make it up that night."
"I know there had been a squall."
"Then do not flatter yourself with false hopes. George is gone past recall; you and Glory must give him up for ever."
Mrs. De Witt shook her head, wiped her eyes with the frill of her cap, looked sorrowfully into her glass and said, "Pore me!"
"You are poor indeed," said Elijah, " but how poor I suspect rather than know. What have you got to live upon?"
"That is just it," answered Mrs. De Witt; "my head has been like the Swin light, a-rewolving and a-rewolving. But there is this difference, the Swin rewolves first light and then dark alternately, whereas in my head there has been naught rewolving but warious degrees of darkness."
"What do you propose doing?"
"Well, I have an idea." Mrs. De Witt hitched her chair nearer to her nephew, and breathed her idea and her spirit together into his ear. "I think I shall marry."
