"I am really glad you are here at this moment, Emmeline, for I actually was weak enough to shrink from seeking you with unpleasant news. Letters from Feroe have at length arrived, and my personal presence is so imperatively needed, that I am self-reproached at not going before; the long silence ought to have convinced me that all was not as it should be."
"But what has occurred, Arthur? I had no idea you contemplated the necessity of going," replied his wife very quietly, as she sat down close by him; but the fiat of separation, the thoughts of a perilous voyage, a visit to an almost desolate island, and the impossibility of receiving regular letters, so crowded upon her all at once, that it was a strong effort to speak at all.
"No, dearest; for what was the use of tormenting you with disagreeable anticipations, when there really might have been no foundation for them. The last accounts from Samboe, were, as you know, received nearly two years ago, telling me that Frederic Wilson was dead, but that his son had been received as his successor in the ministry, and as civil guardian of the island, with if possible, a still greater degree of popularity than his predecessors, from his having been educated in Denmark. His parents had lived on straitened means to give him superior advantages, which, as it proves, he would have been much better without. The vices he has acquired have far outrun the advantages. His example, and that of a band of idle, irregular spirits who have joined him, has not only scandalized the simple people but disturbed their homesteads, brought contention and misery, and in some cases, bloodshed; so that in point of social and domestic position, I fear they have sunk lower than when my grandfather first sought the island. The mother of this unhappy young man has, naturally, perhaps, but weakly, shrunk from informing against him; but her brother, the clergyman of Osteroe, has at length taken upon himself to do so, clearly stating that nothing but personal interference and some months' residence among them will effect a reformation; and that the ruin is more to be regretted, as the little island has been for more than half a century the admiration not only of its immediate neighbors, but of all who have chanced to harbor off its coast. He states, too, that if properly directed and not exposed to the contagion of large cities, as his brother has been, poor Wilson's younger son, now a boy of eleven, may become us worthy and judicious a pastor as his father and grandfather, and so keep the office in his family, as my grandfather was so desirous of doing. The question is, how is this boy to be educated on the island, and whom can I find to take the ministry meanwhile."