CHAPTER XXI.

CHRISTMAS WITH OLD FRIENDS.

BEFORE finally settling down, however, Denzil wrote to his friends Scoot and Winder to say he hoped, if all went well, to be with them on Christmas eve. This news was received all through the fishing quarter with great interest and pleasure.

No traces of delicacy of health, or of the effects of marsh fevers, were visible in the upright stalwart figure, nearly six feet in height, wiry-looking to a degree, and as tough as one of the dyke-eels he had so often speared as a lad, that got out of a train at the smart new station near Marshton that Christmas-time. Denzil felt perfectly bewildered by the many changes that had taken place in the last four years. Two railways ran over the part where only treacherous swamps had been; where the wild-duck had had its home and the snipe their boggy springs, good streets with rows of houses had already been

Р

made. The whole marsh had been drained and become solid ground. The tide no longer flooded the lower part of Marshton; all was changed save the upper portion of the old place, but alterations were imminent even there. After all, it was a better system that would replace the old, and if new blood was coming into the place—in every sense of that expression, for the fisher folk were actually becoming reconciled to marriages between their lasses and the men they regarded as doubtful "furriners" --so much the better for Marshton.

Scoot and Winder gazed in astonishment at the man who presented himself in their fishing quarter on that Christmas eve. "An' to think as we niver thought as ye'd live to be a man! our bit of a 'Reed-bird,' as we called ye," said Winder.

They themselves had developed into a pair of fine healthy bronzed fishermen, as stoutly built as any that ever managed a boat or drew a line.

"Ef 'twaunt fur thet laugh, an' the look in his eyes that we knows so well, we couldn't never believe as 'twas yourself," said Scoot.

"And old Nance?" asked Den, after a little"is she still alive?"

"Yes, poor old creatur, in spite of all the scandalous tricks as we've played her. Let's go an' hev a look at her afore we settles down fur the evenin'."

In answer to the young men's rap at her door, it was opened by old Nance herself.

"Cum in, my lads, cum in," said she. ""Tis lonesome here on a Christmas eve; it's good on ye to cum. I'm jest tired with thinkin' over bygone times; cum in. But, mussy on us, I didn't see as ye'd a stranger with ye!" she added, when the three stood in the firelight of her little room.

"All right, mother, 'tis only a friend, an' we shan't stop long; we've jest brought ye a little parcel to remind ye what time 'tis," said Winder.

"Bless yer kind hearts, 'tis real good on ye; an' I wunt keep ye now, as ye've a stranger with ye: 'tis easy to see as he don't belong to our folks," remarked the old woman.

"Now don't ye make too sure o' that, Nance," cried Scoot. "Put on yer specs, an' hev a good look at him."

At that Denzil rose from his chair and grasped the old woman's hand.

She turned to Scoot and Winder, and in a tremulous voice said, "This ain't one o' yer old pranks agin, surely; there's somethin' o' Denzil about him. An' yityit"

"Nancy, I am Denzil," said the young man.

Poor old Nance! she had been greatly attached to the "boy" in her own way, and she was strangely moved as she looked at him earnestly through her

glasses. "Ye are yer father's son, an' no mistake,” she said at last; "his very pictur ye've growed tu be. Poor Philip! May ye be more happy an' fortunate in yer life than he ever was. He's dead

an' gone now, an' his own didn't du as they should by him; but there my wishes fur ye this Christmas eve is thet ye may be happier. Ye've got his looks, boy; but ye belongs to us, don't ye niver forgit that."

How the whole of that Christmas eve was spent we need not detail here. Old memories came thick and fast amid the clouds of smoke that curled about the fishermen's weather-beaten faces under the low timbered ceiling. Many a question was put and answered about the old friends who had passed away, and those that remained, and of the changes that were so rapidly taking place all around. They told how some of the marshes had been drained to such an extent that fruit-trees were growing where the reeds had been; and the decoy,—that sacred decoy, the precincts of which had been so respected that never had a shore-shooter been known to fire a gun within half a mile of it—where enormous quantities of wild-fowl had been captured, the pride and boast of the marshlands, as it had been, they said, from the times of the great Queen Elizabeth, -was no longer in existence; a young and thriving fruit orchard stood now in its place.

The swamp, too, where the Lord of Shoreland's ghostly troop came to fetch their corpse-lights from, had been thoroughly drained; and, in fact, the railway now passed right through it. And that part

of the town where Den had been used to see the grass growing among the stones of the pavement, had become a busy and thriving place of business.

"'Tis a strange thing," said one of his old friends, "that folks could be so perverse and narrow-minded ez tu find fault with men fur marryin' tu please themselves; but they too are at rest now, boy, an' we're glad tu see ye so well an' hearty."

"That's all past and gone," said Den.

"Yes; an' ye'll marry as he did, an' please yerself," said one of the old crones, with a sharp look at the young man.

The fisher lasses showed him as much kindness as ever; but they seemed, after many discussions amongst themselves on the subject, to come to the conclusion that Den was not likely to choose a wife from their midst. He liked a little fun with them, as he had always done, and as every well-conditioned young man will, but his natural reserve and his quiet manner kept them somewhat at a dis

tance.

It seemed to him that the fisher folk had already begun to change, like their surroundings. They were losing much of their peculiar dialect, and