about. As he did so, his glance fell on Faith standing there alone against the pale sky, for the weather'd thickened, and watching the surf break at her feet. He was motionless, gazing at her long, and then, when he had turned once or twice irresolutely, he ground his heel into the sand and went back. The men rose and wandered on with him, and they talked together for a while, and I saw money pass; and pretty soon Mr. Gabriel returned, his face pallid, but smiling, and he had in his hand some little bright shells that you don't often find on these Northern beaches, and he said he had bought them of those men. And all this time he'd not spoken with Faith, and there was the danger yet in her eye. But nothing came of it. On the way back we had put up the lines, and Mr. Gabriel had hauled in the lobster-net for the last time. He liked that branch of the business; he said it had all the excitement of gambling,-the slow settling downwards, the fading of the last ripple, the impenetrable depth and shade and the mystery of the work below, five minutes of expectation, and it might bring up a scale of the sea-serpent, or the king of the crabs might have crept in for a nap in the folds, or it might come up as if you'd dredged for pearls, or it might hold the great backward-crawling lobsters, or a tangle of seaweed, or the long yellow locks of some drowned girl, or nothing at all. So he always drew in that net, and it needed muscle, and his was like steel,-not good for much in the long pull, but just for a breathing could handle the biggest boatman in the harbour. Well,-we'd hoisted the sail and were in the creek once more, for the creek was only to be used at high-water, and I'd told Dan I couldn't be away from mother over another tide and so we mustn't get aground, and he'd told me not to fret, there was nothing too shallow for us on the coast. "This boat,' said Dan, "she'll float in a heavy dew." And he began singing a song he liked :— fishermen can tell each other by the lantern rocking outside at night in the dory. The wind was dead east, and now we flew before it, and now we tacked in it, up and up the winding stream, and always a little pointed sail came skimming on in suit. "What sail is that, Dan?" asked I. "It looks like the one that flitted ahead this morning." "It is the one," said Dan,-for he'd brought up a whole horde of superstitious memories, and a gloom that had been hovering off and on his face settled there for good. "As much of a one as that was. It's no sail at all. It's a deathsign. And I've never been down here and seen it but trouble was on its heels. Georgie! there's two of them!" We all looked, but it was hidden in a curve, and when it stole in sight again there were two of them, filmy and faint as spirits' wings,-and while we gazed they vanished, whether supernaturally or in the mist that was rising masthigh I never thought, for my blood was frozen as it ran. "You have fear;" asked Mr. Gabriel,-his face perfectly pale, and his eye almost lost in darkness. "If it is a phantom, it can do you no harm." Faith's teeth chattered,-I saw them. He turned to her, and as their look met, a spot of carnation burned into his cheek almost as a brand would have burned. He seemed to be balancing some point, to be searching her and sifting her, and Faith half rose, proudly, and pale, as if his look pierced her with pain. The look was long, but before it fell, a glow and sparkle filled the eyes, and over his face there curled the deep, strange smile of the morning, till the long lids and heavy lashes dropped and made it sad. And Faith, she started in a new surprise, the darkness gathered and crept off her face, and spleen venom or what-not became absorbed and lost, and there was nothing in herglance but passionate forgetfulness. Some souls are like the white river-lilies, fixed, yet floating; but Mr. Gabriel had no firm root anywhere, and was blown about with every breeze, like a leaf on the flood. His purposes melted and made with his moods. or The wind got round more to the north, the mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped his cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat-and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so-that he took little notice Then Mr Gabriel stood up, as if to held it aloft, while he passed the other hand change his position; and taking off his hat, he across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he stood so, many minutes. hang out a purple pennant?" "Dan," I said, "did your spiritual craft ever of us. "No," said Dan. said Mr. Gabriel, putting on his hat. And suiting the action to the word, a little green signal curled up and flaunted above us like a bunch of the weed floating there in the water beneath and dyeing all the shallows so that they looked like caves of cool emerald, and wide off and over them the west burned smoulderingly red like a furnace. Many a time since, I've felt the magical colour between those banks and along those meadows, but then I felt none of it; every wit I bad was too awake and alert and fastfixed in watching. "Is it that the phantoms can be flesh and blood?" said Mr. Gabriel laughingly; and lifting his arm again, he hailed the foremost. "Boat ahoy! What names?" said he. The answer came back on the wind full and round. "Speed,' and 'Follow.'" "Where from?" asked Dan, with just a glint in his eye, for usually he knew every boat on the river, he didn't know these. "From the schooner Flyaway, taking in sand over at Black Rocks." Then Mr. Gabriel spoke again, as they drew near, but whether he spoke so fast that I couldn't understand, or whether he spoke French, I never knew; and Dan, with some kind of feeling that it was Mr. Gabriel's acquaintance, suffered the one we spoke to pass us. Once or twice Mr. Gabriel had begun some question to Dan about the approaching weather, but had turned it off again before anybody could answer. You see he had some little nobility left, and didn't want the very man he was going to injure to show him how to do it. Now, however, he asked him that was steering the Speed, if we were going to have a storm. The man thought we were. "How is it, then, that your schooner prepares to sail ?" "Oh, wind's backed in; we'll be on blue water before the gale breaks, I reckon, and then beat off where there's plenty of sea-room." "But she shall make shipwreck!" "Not if the craft know herself, and we think she do,'" was the reply from another, as they passed. "Look out, Georgie !" said Dan, for he thought I was going to graze my shoulder upon the side there. I looked; and when I turned again, Mr. Gabriel was rising up from some earnest and hurried sentence to Faith. And Faith, too, was standing, standing and swaying with indecision, and gazing away out before her, so flushed and so beautiful,-so loath and so willing. Poor thing! poor thing! as if her rising in itself were not the whole! Mr. Gabriel stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also took an oar. How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment !— perfect like a statue, I mean,-so slender, so cleanlimbed, his dark face pale to transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw, and then a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high fields and smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and he with his oar planted firmly hung there bending far back with it, completely full of strength and grace. "It is not the bateaux in the rapids," said he. "What are you about?" asked Dan, with sudden hoarseness. "You are pulling the wrong way!" Mr. Gabriel laughed, and threw down his oar, and stepped back again; gave his hand to Faith, and half led, half lifted her, over the side, and into the Speed, followed, and never looked behind him. They let go something they had held, the Speed put her nose in the water and sprinkled us with spray, plunged, and dashed off like an arrow. It was like him,-daring and insolent coolness! Just like him! Always the soul of defiance! None but one so reckless and impetuous as he would have dreamed of flying into the teeth of the tempest in that shell of a schooner. But he was mad with love, and they-there wasn't a man among them but was the worse for liquor. 66 For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a joke, and went to trim the boat for racing, not meaning they Somehow I began to hate myself, I was so full should reach town first. But I-I saw it all. of poisonous suspicions. How did Mr. Gabriel "Dan!" I sung out, save her! She's not know the schooner prepared to sail? And this coming back! They'll make for the schooner man, could he tell boom from bowsprit? I at Black Rocks! Oh, Dan, he's taken her didn't believe it; he had the hang of the up- off!" river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel's face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in his eye like a beating pulse. We had reached the draw, it was lifted for the Speed, she had passed, and the wind was in her sail once more. Yet, somehow, she hung back. And then I saw that the men in her were of those with whom Mr. Gabriel had spoken at Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, mayn't be so quick as another, but, like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague sense of this had been upon Dan all day. Yet now he stood thunderstruck, and the thing went on before his very eyes. It was more than he could believe at once, and perhaps his first feeling was, Why should he hinder? And then the flood fell. No thought of his loss,-though loss it wa'n't,-only of his friend,-of such stunning treachery, that, if the sun fell hissing into the sea at noon, it would have mattered less,-only of that loss that tore his heart out with it. "Gabriel!" he shouted,-" Gabriel!" And his voice was heart-rending. I know that Mr. Gabriel felt it, for he never turned nor stirred. Then I don't know what came over Dan: a blind rage swelling in his heart seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame. He sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away. He seized an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never heard of. We flew, through cloven ridges, we became a wind ourselves, and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself and had landed among them in the Speed. The wherry careened with the shock and the water poured into her, and she flung headlong and away as his foot spurned her. Heaven knows why she didn't upset, for thought of nothing but the scene before me as I drifted off from it. I shut my eyes that I mayn't see that horrid scuffle. Mr. Gabriel rose and turned. If Dan was the giant beside him, he himself was so well-knit, so supple, so adroit, that his power was like the blade in the hand. Dan's strength was lying round loose, but Mr. Gabriel's was trained, it hid like springs of steel between brain and wrist, and from him the clap fell with the bolt. And then, besides, Dan did not love Faith, and he did love Gabriel. Any one could see how it would go. I screamed. I cried, "Faith! Faith!" And some natural instinct stirred in Faith's heart, for she clung to Mr. Gabriel's arm to pull him off from Dan. But he shook her away like rain. Then such a mortal weakness took possession of me that I saw everything black, and when it was clean gone, I looked, and they were locked in each other's arms, fierce, fierce and fell, a death-grip. They were staggering to the boat's edge: only this I saw, that Mr. Gabriel was inside: suddenly the helmsman interposed with an oar, and broke their grasps. Mr. Gabriel reeled away, free, for a second; then, the passion, the fury, the hate in his heart feeding his strength as youth fed the locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in his two arms and threw him like a stone into the water. Stiffened to ice, I waited for Dan to rise; the other craft, the Follow, skimmed between us, and one man managing her that she shouldn't heel, the rest drew Dan in,-it's not the depth of two foot there,-tacked about, and after a minute came along-side, seized our painter, and dropped him gently into his own boat. Then-for the Speed had got afloat again-the thing stretched her two sails wing and wing, and went ploughing up a great furrow of foam before her. I sprang to Dan. He was not senseless, but in a kind of stupor: his head had struck the fluke of a half-sunk (anchor and it had stunned him, but as the wound bled he recovered slowly and opened his eyes. Ah, what misery was in them! I turned to the fugitives. They were yet in sight, Mr. Gabriel sitting and seeming to adjure Faith, whose skirts he held; but she stood, and her arms were outstretched, and, pale as a foam-wreath her face, and piercing as a nightwind her voice, I heard her cry, "Oh, Georgie ! Georgie!" It was too late for her to cry or to wring her hand now. She should have thought of that before. But Mr. Gabriel rose and drew her down, and hid her face in his arms and bent over it; and so they fled up the basin and round the long line of sand, and out into the gloom and the curdling mists. I bound up Dan's head. I couldn't steer with an oar-that was out of the question-but, as luck would have it, could row tolerably; so I got down the little mast, and at length reached the wharves. The town-lights flickered up in the darkness and flickered back from the black rushing river, and then out blazed the great mills; and as I felt along, I remembered times when we'd put in by the tender sunset, as the rose faded out of the water and the orange ebbed down the west, and one by one the sweet evening-bells chimed forth, so clear and high, and each with a different tone, that it seemed as if the stars must flock, tinkling, into the sky. And here were the bells ringing out again, ringing out of the gray and the gloom, dull and brazen, as if they rang from some cavern of shadows, or from the mouth of Hades-but no, that was down-river! Well, I made my way, and the men on the landing took up Dan, and helped him in and got him on my little bed, and no sooner there than the heavy sleep with which he had struggled fell on him like lead. The story flew from mouth to mouth, the place rang with it; nobody had any need to add to it, or to make it out that a griffin or a dragon had gripped Faith and carried her off in his talons. But everybody declared that those boats could be no ship's yawls at all, but must belong to parties from up-river camping out on the beach, and that a parcel of such must have gone sailing with some of the hands of a sanddroger: there was one in the stream now, that had got off with the tide, said the Jerdan boys, who'd been down there that afternoon, though there was no such name as "Flyaway" on her stern, and they were waiting for the master of her, who'd gone off on a spree-a dare-devil fellow, that used to run a smuggler between Bordeaux and Bristol, as they'd heard say: and all agreed that Mr. Gabriel could never have had to do with them before that day, or he'd have known what a place a sand-droger would be for a woman; and everybody made excuses for Gabriel, and everybody was down on Faith. So there things lay. It was raw and chill when the last neighbour left us, the sky was black as a cloak, not a star to be seen, the wind had edged back to the east again and came in wet and wild from the sea and fringed with its thunder. Oh, poor little Faith, what a night! what a night for her! I went back and sat down by Dan, and tried to keep his head cool. Father was up walking the kitchen-floor till late, but at length he lay down across the foot of mother's bed, as if expecting to be called. The lights were put out, straight to the mark, gathering its grinding masses mast-high, poising, plunging, and swamping and crashing them into bottomless pits of destruction, storms where waves toss and breakers roar; where, hanging on crests that slip from under, reefs impale the hull, and drowning wretches cling to the crags with stiffening hands, and the sleet freezes them, and the spray, and the sea lashes and beats them with great strokes and sucks them down to death: and right in the midst of it all there burst a gun-one, another, and no more. "Oh, Faith! Faith!" I cried again, and I ran and hid my head in the bed. How long did I stay so? An hour, or maybe two. Dan was still dead with sleep, but mother had no more closed an eye than I. There was no rain now, the wind had fallen, the dark had lifted; I looked out once more, and could just see dimly the great waters swinging in the river from bank to bank. I drew the bucket fresh, and bound the cloths cold on Dan's head again. I hadn't a thought in my head, and fell to counting the meshes in the net that hung from the wall, but in my ears there was the everlasting rustle of the sea and shore. It grew clearer it got to being a universal gray; there'd been no sunrise, but it was day. Dan stirred-he turned over heavily; then he opened his eyes wide and looked about him. I've had such a fright!" he said. "Georgie! is that you?" there was no noise in the town, everyone slept everyone, except they watched like me, on that terrible night. No noise in the town, did I say? Ah, but there was! It came creeping round the corners, it poured rushing up the street, it rose from everywhere-a voice, a voice of woe, the heavy booming note of the sea. I looked out, but it was pitch-dark, light had forsaken the world, we were beleaguered by blackness. It grew colder, as if one felt a fog fall, and the wind, mounting slowly, now blew a gale. It eddied in clouds of dead and whirling leaves, and sent big torn branches flying aloft; it took the house by the four corners and shook it to loosening the rafters, and I felt the chair rock under me; it rumbled down the chimney as if it would tear the life out of us. And with every fresh gust of the gale the rain slapped against the wall, the rain that fell in rivers, and went before the wind in sheets-and sheltered as I was, the torrents seemed to pour over me like cataracts, and every drop pierced me like a needle, and I put my fingers in my ears to shut out the howl of the wind and the waves. I couldn't keep my thoughts away from Faith. Oh, poor girl, this wasn't what she'd expected! As plainly as if I were aboard-ship I felt the scene, the hurrying feet, the slippery deck, the hoarse cries, the creaking cordage, the heaving and plunging and straining, and the wild wild night. And I was beating off those dreadful lines with them, two dreadful lines of white froth through the blackness, two lines where the horns of breakers guard the harbour-all night long beating off the lee with them, my life in my teeth, and chill, blank, shivering horror before me. My whole soul, my whole being, was fixed in that one spot, that little vessel driving on the rocks: it seemed as if a madness took possession of me, I reeled as I walked, I forefelt the shivering shock, I waited till she should strike. And then I thought I heard cries, and I ran out in the storm, and down upon the causway, but nothing met me but the hollow night and the roaring sea and the wind. I came back, and hurried up and down and wrung my hands in an agony. Pictures of summer nights flashed upon me and faded-where out of deep-blue vaults the stars hung like lamps, great and golden-or where soft films just hazing heaven caught the rays, till all above gleamed like gauze faintly powdered and spangled with silver-or heavy with heat, slipping over silent waters, through scented airs, under purple skies. And then storms rolled in and rose before my eyes, distinct for a moment, and breaking-such as I'd seen them from the Shoals in broad daylight, when tempestuous columns scooped themselves up from the green He hid his face, as he spoke, so that his voice gulfs and shattered in foam on the shuddering came thick, and great choking groans rent their rock-ah! but that was day, and this was mid-way up from his heart. night and murk!—storms as I'd heard tell of them off Cape Race, when great steamers went down with but one cry, and the waters crowded them out of sight-storms where, out of the wilderness of waves that far and wide wasted white around, a single one came ploughing on | With that it swept over him afresh, and he fell back. In a moment or two he tried to rise, but he was weak as a child. He contrived to keep on his elbow a moment, though, and to give a look out of the window. "It came on to blow, didn't it?" he asked; but there he sank down again. "I "I can't stay so!" he murmured soon. can't stay so! Here, Georgie, get out the spyglass, and go up on the roof and look over. I've had a dream, I tell you! I've had a dream. Not that either; but it's just stamped on me! It was like a storm-and I dreamed that that schooner-the Flyaway-had parted. And the half of her's crashed down just as she broke, and Faith and that man are high up on the bows in the middle of the South Breaker! Make haste, Georgie! make haste!" I flew to the drawers and opened them, and began to put the spy-glass together; suddenly he cried out again "Oh, here's where the fault was! What right had I ever to marry the child, not loving her? I bound her! I crushed her! I stifled her! If she lives, it is my sin; if she dies, I murder her!" All at once, as I looked up, there stood mother, in her long white gown, beside the bed, and bending over and taking Dan's hot head in her two hands. It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of hands-perhaps every one feels just so about their mother-but only her touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it's in the heart or the head. "Oh, Aunt Rhody," said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted eyes, "can't you help me?" "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," said mother. "There's no help, there!" cried Dan. He wouldn't have let a little child run into eternal destruction!" "Hush, hush, Dan!" murmured mother. "Faith never can have been at sea in such a night as this, and not have felt God's hand snatching her out of sin. If she lives, she's a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation." 66 Yes, yes," muttered father, in the room beyond, "it's best to clean up a thing with the first spot, and not wait for it to get all rusty with crime." "And he!" said Dan, "and he-that manGabriel!" said I. "Between the footfall and the ground If mercy's asked, mercy's found," "Are you there yet, Georgie?" he cried, turning to me. "Here ! I'll go myself!" But he only stumbled and fell on the bed again. "In all the terror and the tempest of these long hours for there's been a fearful storm, though you haven't felt it," said mother, "in all that, Mr. Gabriel can't have slept. But at first it must have been that great dread appalled him, and he may have been beset with sorrow. He'd brought her to this. But at last, for he's no coward, he has looked death in the face and not flinched; and the danger, and the grandeur there is in despair, have lifted his spirit to great heights-heights found now in an hour, but which in a whole life long he never would have gained - heights from which he has seen the light of God's face and been transfigured in itheights where the soul dilates to a stature it can never lose. Oh, Dan, there's a moment, a moment when the dross strikes off, and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the great white diamond. For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God-of Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning. Oh, I will believe that Mr. Gabriel hadn't any need to grope as we do, but that suddenly he saw the Heavenly Arm and clung to it, and the grasp closed round him, and death and hell can have no power over him now. Dan, poor boy, is it better to lie in the earth with the ore than to be forged in the furnace and beaten to a blade fit for the hands of archangels?" And mother stopped, trembling like a leaf. I'd been wiping and screwing the glass, and I'd waited a breath, for mother always talked so like a preacher; but when she'd finished, after a second or two Dan looked up, and said, as if he'd just come in "Aunt Rhody! how come you out of bed?" And then mother, she got upon the bed, and she took Dan's head on her breast and fell to stroking his brows, laying her cool palms on his temples and on his eyelids, as once I'd have given my ears to do-and I slipped out of the room. Oh, I hated to go up those stairs, to mount that ladder, to open the window! And once there, I waited and waited before I dared to look. The night had unnerved me. At length I fixed the glass. I swept the broad swollen stream, to the yellowing woods, and over the meadows, where a pale transient beam crept under and pried up the hay-cocks-the smoke that began to curl from the chimneys and fall as soon-the mists blowing off from Indian Hill, but brooding blue and dense down the turnpike, and burying the red spark of the moon, that smothered like a half-dead coal in her ashes-anywhere, anywhere but that spot! I don't know why it was, but I couldn't level the glass there - my arm would fall, my eye haze. Finally I brought it round nearer and tried again. Everywhere, as far as your eye could reach, the sea was yeasty and white with froth, and great streaks of it were setting up the inky river, and against it there were the twin light-houses quivering their little yellow rays as if to mock the dawn, and far out on the edge of day the great light at the Isles of Shoals blinked and blinked, crimson and gold, fainter and fainter, and lost at last. It was no use, I didn't dare point it, my hand trembled so I could see nothing plain, when suddenly an engine went thundering over the bridge and startled me into stillness. The tube slung in my hold and steadied against the chimney, and there- -What was it in the field? what ghastly picture?" The glass crashed from my hand, and I staggered shrieking down the ladder. The sound wasn't well through my lips, when the door slammed, and Dan had darted out of the house and to the shore. I after him. There was a knot sitting and standing round there in the gray, shivering, with their hands in their pockets and their pipes set in their teeth; but the gloom was on them as well, and the pipes went out between the puffs. "Where's Dennis's boat?" Dan demanded, as he strode. "The six-oar's all the one not". "The six-oar I want. Who goes with me?" There wasn't a soul in the ward but would have followed Dan's lead to the end of the world and jumped off; and before I could tell their names there were three men on the thwarts, six oars in the air, Dan stood in the bows, a word from him, and they shot away. I watched while I could see, and then in and up to the attic, forgetting to put mother in her bed, forgetting all things but the one. And there lay the glass broken. I sat awhile with |