More Leave-Taking—Deep Designs—Bumpus in a New Capacity.  
On the particular day of which we are writing, Alice Mason felt an unusual depression of spirits. She had been told by her father of the intended departure of the widow and her son, and had been warned not to mention it to any one. In consequence of this, the poor child was debarred her usual consolation of pouring her grief into the black bosom of Poopy. It naturally followed, therefore, that she sought her next favourite—the tree.
 
Here, to her surprise and comfort, she found Corrie seated on one of its roots, with his head resting on the stem, and his hands clasped before him. His general appearance was that of a human being in the depths of woe. On observing Alice, he started up, and assuming a cheerful look, ran to meet her.
 
“Oh! I’m so glad to find you here, Corrie,” cried Alice, hastening forward, “I’m in such distress! Do you know that— Oh! — I forgot; papa said I was to tell nobody about it!”
 
“Don’t let that trouble you, Alice,” said Corrie, as they sat down together under the tree. “I know what you were about to say—Henry and his mother are going away.”
 
“How do you know that? I thought it was a great secret!”
 
“So it is, a tremendous secret,” rejoined Corrie, with a look that was intended to be very mysterious; “and I know it, because I’ve been let into the secret for reasons which I cannot tell even to you. But there is another secret which you don’t know yet, and which will surprise you perhaps. I am going away, too!”
 
“You,” exclaimed the little girl, her eyes dilating to their full size.
 
“Ay, me!”
 
“You’re jesting, Corrie.”
 
“Am I? I wish I was; but it’s a fact.”
 
“But where are you going to?” said Alice, her eyes filling with tears.
 
“I don’t know.”
 
“Corrie!”
 
“I tell you, I don’t know; and if I did know, I couldn’t tell. Listen, Alice, I will tell you as much as I am permitted to let out.”
 
The boy became extremely solemn at this point, took the little girl’s hand, and gazed into her face as he spoke.
 
“You must know,” he began, “that Henry and his mother and I go away to-night—”
 
“To-night?” cried Alice, quickly.
 
“To-night,” repeated the boy. “Bumpus and Jakolu go with us. I have said that I don’t know where we are going to, but I am pretty safe in assuring you that we are going somewhere. Why we are going, I am forbidden to tell—divulge, I think Henry called it, but what that means I don’t know. I can only guess it’s another word for tell, and yet it can’t be that either, for you can speak of telling lies, but you can’t speak of divulging them. However, that don’t matter. But I’m not forbidden to tell you why I am going away. In the first place, then, I’m going to seek my fortune! Where I’m to find it remains to be seen. The only thing I know is, that I mean to find it somewhere or other, and then,” (here Corrie became very impressive,) “come back and live beside you and your father, not to speak of Poopy and Toozle.”
 
Alice smiled sadly at this. Corrie looked graver than ever, and went on—
 
“Meanwhile, during my absence, I will write letters to you, and you’ll write ditto to me. I am going away because I ought to go and be doing something for myself. You know quite well that I would rather stop beside you than go anywhere in this wide world, Alice; but that would be stupid. I’m getting to be a man now, and mustn’t go on shewin’ the weaknesses of a boy. In the second, or third, place—I forget which, but no matter—I am going with Henry because I could not go with a better man; and in the fourth—if it’s not the fifth—place, I’m going because Uncle Ole Thorwald has long wished me to go to sea, and, to tell you the truth, I would have gone long ago had it not been for you, Alice. There’s only one thing that bothers me.” Here Corrie looked at his fair companion with a perplexed air.
 
“What is that?” asked Alice, sympathetically.
 
“It is that I must go without saying good-bye to Uncle Ole. I’m very sorry about it. It will look so ungrateful to him; but it can’t be helped.”
 
“Why not?” inquired Alice. “If he has often said he wished you to go to sea, would he not be delighted to hear that you are going?”
 
“Yes; but he must not know that I am going to-night, and with Henry Stuart.”
 
“Why not?”
 
“Ah! that’s the point. Mystery! Alice—mystery! What a world of mystery this is!” observed the precocious Corrie, shaking his head with profound solemnity. “I’ve been involved, (I think that’s the word,) rolled up, drowned, and buried in mystery for more than three weeks, and I’m beginning to fear that I’ll never again git into the unmysteriously happy state in which I lived before this abominable man-of-war came to the island. No Alice, I dare not say anything more on that point even to you just now. But won’t I give it you all in my first letter? and won’t you open your eyes just until they look like two blue saucers?”
 
Further conversation between the friends was interrupted at this point by the inrushing of Toozle, followed up by Poopy, and, a short time after, by Mr Mason, who took Alice away with him, and left poor Corrie disconsolate.
 
While this was going on, John Bumpus was fulfilling his mission to Ole Thorwald.
 
He found that obstinate individual in his own parlour, deep in the investigation of the state of his books of business, which had been allowed to fall into arrear during his absence.
 
“Come in, Bumpus. So I hear you were half-hanged when we were away.”
 
Ole wheeled round on his stool and hooked his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest as he said this, leaned his back against his desk, and regarded the seaman with a facetious look.
 
“Half-hanged, indeed,” said Bumpus, indignantly. “I was more than half—three-quarters at least. Why, the worst of it’s over w’en the rope’s round your neck.”
 
“That is a matter which you can’t speak to, John Bumpus, seeing that you’ve never gone beyond the putting of the rope round your neck.”
 
“Well, I’m content with wot I does happen to know about it,” remarked Jo, making a wry face; “an’ I hope that I’ll never git the chance of knowin’ more. But I comed here on business, Mr Thorwald,” (here John became mysterious and put his finger to his lips.) “I’ve comed here, Mr Thorwald, to—split.”
 
As Ole did not quite understand the meaning of this word, and did not believe that the seaman actually meant to rend himself from head to foot, he said— “Why, Bumpus, what d’ye mean?”
 
“I mean as how that I’ve comed to split on my comrades—w&rs............