Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE
Automaton Ear,
AND
OTHER SKETCHES.

BY

FLORENCE McLANDBURGH.

CHICAGO:

JANSEN, McCLURG & CO.

1876.

COPYRIGHT,

By FLORENCE McLANDBURGH,

A. D. 1876.

Dedicated

TO

JOHN McLANDBURGH.

Note.—Some of the sketches and tales in this volume were contributed to “Scribner’s Monthly,” “Appleton’s Journal,” and the “Lakeside Magazine,” and are used here, in a revised form, by the kind permission of the editors. Others appear now for the first time.

F. McL.

Chicago, April, 1876.

CONTENTS.

THE AUTOMATON EAR.

The day was hardly different from many another day, though I will likely recall it even when the mist of years has shrouded the past in an undefined hueless cloud. The sunshine came in at my open window. Out of doors it flooded all the land in its warm summer light—the spires of the town and the bare college campus; farther, the tall bearded barley and rustling oats; farther still, the wild grass and the forest, where the river ran and the blue haze dipped from the sky.

The temptation was greater than I could stand, and taking my book I shut up the “study,” as the students called my small apartment, leaving it for one bounded by no walls or ceiling.

The woods rang with the hum and chirp of insects and birds. I threw myself down beneath a tall, broad-spreading tree. Against its moss-covered trunk I could hear the loud tap of the woodpecker secreted high up among its leaves, and off at the end of a tender young twig a robin trilled, swinging himself to and fro through the checkered sunlight. I never grew weary listening to the changeful voice of the forest and the river, and was hardly conscious of reading until I came upon this paragraph:—

“As a particle of the atmosphere is never lost, so sound is never lost. A strain of music or a simple tone will vibrate in the air forever and ever, decreasing according to a fixed ratio. The diffusion of the agitation extends in all directions, like the waves in a pool, but the ear is unable to detect it beyond a certain point. It is well known that some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others under precisely similar circumstances are wholly lost. Thus the fault is not in the sound itself, but in our organ of hearing, and a tone once in existence is always in existence.”

This was nothing new to me. I had read it before, though I had never thought of it particularly; but while I listened to the robin, it seemed singular to know that all the sounds ever uttered, ever born, were floating in the air now—all music, every tone, every bird-song—and we, alas! could not hear them.

Suddenly a strange idea shot through my brain—Why not? Ay, why not hear? Men had constructed instruments which could magnify to the eye and—was it possible?—Why not?

I looked up and down the river, but saw neither it, nor the sky, nor the moss that I touched. Did the woodpecker still tap secreted among the leaves, and the robin sing, and the hum of insects run along the bank as before? I can not recollect, I can not recollect anything, only Mother Flinse, the deaf and dumb old crone that occasionally came to beg, and sell nuts to the students, was standing in the gateway. I nodded to her as I passed, and walked up her long, slim shadow that lay on the path. It was a strange idea that had come so suddenly into my head and startled me. I hardly dared to think of it, but I could think of nothing else. It could not be possible, and yet—why not?

Over and over in the restless hours of the night I asked myself, I said aloud, Why not? Then I laughed at my folly, and wondered what I was thinking of and tried to sleep—but if it could be done?

The idea clung to me. It forced itself up in class hours and made confusion in the lessons. Some said the professor was ill those two or three days before the vacation; perhaps I was. I scarcely slept; only the one thought grew stronger—Men had done more wonderful things; it certainly was possible, and I would accomplish this grand invention. I would construct the king of all instruments—I would construct an instrument which could catch these faint tones vibrating in the air and render them audible. Yes, and I would labor quietly until it was perfected, or the world might laugh.

The session closed and the college was deserted, save by the few musty students whom, even in imagination, one could hardly separate or distinguish from the old books on the library shelves. I could wish for no better opportunity to begin my great work. The first thing would be to prepare for it by a careful study of acoustics, and I buried myself among volumes on the philosophy of sound.

I went down to London and purchased a common ear-trumpet. My own ear was exceedingly acute, and to my great delight I found that, with the aid of the trumpet just as it was, I could distinguish sounds at a much greater distance, and those nearer were magnified in power. I had only to improve upon this instrument; careful study, careful work, careful experiment, and my hopes would undoubtedly be realized.

Back to my old room in the college I went with a complete set of tools. So days and weeks I shut myself in, and every day and every week brought nothing but disappointment. The instrument seemed only to diminish sound rather than increase it, yet still I worked on and vowed I would not grow discouraged.

Hour after hour I sat, looking out of my narrow window. The fields of barley and waving oats had been reaped, the wheat too had ripened and gone, but I did not notice. I sprang up with a joyful exclamation—Strange never to have thought of it before! Perhaps I had not spent my time in vain, after all. How could I expect to test my instrument in this close room with only that little window? It should be removed from immediate noises, high up in the open air, where there would be no obstructions. I would never succeed here—but where should I go? It must be some place in which I would never be liable to interruption, for my first object was to be shielded and work in secret.

I scoured the neighborhood for an appropriate spot without success, when it occurred to me that I had heard some one say the old gray church was shut up. This church was situated just beyond the suburbs of the town. It was built of rough stone, mottled and stained by unknown years. The high, square tower, covered by thick vines that clung and crept round its base, was the most venerable monument among all the slabs and tombs where it stood sentinel. Only graves deserted and uncared for by the living kept it company. People said the place was too damp for use, and talked of rebuilding, but it had never been done. Now if I could gain access to the tower, that was the very place for my purpose.

I found the door securely fastened, and walked round and round without discovering any way of entrance; but I made up my mind, if it were possible to get inside of that church I would do it, and without the help of keys. The high windows were not to be thought of; but in the rear of the building, lower down, where the fuel had probably been kept, there was a narrow opening which was boarded across. With very little difficulty I knocked out the planks and crept through. It was a cellar, and, as I had anticipated, the coal receptacle. After feeling about, I found a few rough steps which led to a door that was unlocked and communicated with the passage back of the vestry-room.

The tower I wished to explore was situated in the remote corner of the building. I passed on to the church. Its walls were discolored by green mould, and blackened where the water had dripped through. The sun, low down in the sky, lit the tall arched windows on the west, and made yellow strips across the long aisles, over the faded pews with their stiff, straight backs, over the chancel rail, over the altar with its somber wood-work; but there was no warmth; only the cheerless glare seemed to penetrate the cold, dead atmosphere,—only the cheerless glare without sparkle, without life, came into that voiceless sanctuary where the organ slept. At the right of the vestibule a staircase led to the tower; it ascended to a platform laid on a level with the four windows and a little above the point of the church roof. These four windows were situated one on each side of the tower, running high up, and the lower casement folding inward.

Here was my place. Above the tree-tops, in the free open air, with no obstacle to obstruct the wind, I could work unmolested by people or noise. The fresh breeze that fanned my face was cool and pleasant. An hour ago I had been tired, disappointed, and depressed; but now, buoyant with hope, I was ready to begin work again—work that I was determined to accomplish.

The sun had gone. I did not see the broken slabs and urns in the shadow down below; I did not see the sunken graves and the rank grass and the briers. I looked over them and saw the gorgeous fringes along the horizon, scarlet and gold and pearl; saw them quiver and brighten to flame, and the white wings of pigeons whirl and circle in the deepening glow.

I closed the windows, and when I had crawled out of the narrow hole, carefully reset the boards just as I had found them. In another day all the tools and books that I considered necessary were safely deposited in the tower. I only intended to make this my workshop, still, of course, occupying my old room in the college.

Here I matured plan after plan. I studied, read, worked, knowing, feeling that at last I must succeed; but failure followed failure, and I sank into despondency only to begin again with a kind of desperation. When I went down to London and wandered about, hunting up different metals and hard woods, I never entered a concert-room or an opera-house. Was there not music in store for me, such as no mortal ear had ever heard? All the music, every strain that had sounded in the past ages? Ah, I could wait; I would work patiently and wait.

I was laboring now upon a theory that I had not tried heretofore. It was my last resource; if this failed, then—but it would not fail! I resolved not to make any test, not to put it near my ear until it was completed. I discarded all woods and used only the metals which best transmitted sound. Finally it was finished, even to the ivory ear-piece. I held the instrument all ready—I held it and looked eastward and westward and back again. Suddenly all control over the muscles of my hand was gone, it felt like stone; then the strange sensation passed away. I stood up and lifted the trumpet to my ear—What! Silence? No, no—I was faint, my brain was confused, whirling. I would not believe it; I would wait a moment until this dizziness was gone, and then—then I would be able to hear. I was deaf now. I still held the instrument; in my agitation the ivory tip shook off and rolled down rattling on the floor. I gazed at it mechanically, as if it had been a pebble; I never thought of replacing it, and, mechanically, I raised the trumpet a second time to my ear. A crash of discordant sounds, a confused jarring noise broke upon me and I drew back trembling, dismayed.

Fool! O fool of fools never to have thought of this, which a child, a dunce would not have overlooked! My great invention was nothing, was worse than nothing, was worse than a failure. I might have known that my instrument would magnify present sounds in the air to such a degree as to make them utterly drown all others, and, clashing together, produce this noise like the heavy rumble of thunder.

The college reopened, and I took up my old line of duties, or at least attempted them, for the school had grown distasteful to me. I was restless, moody, and discontented. I tried to forget my disappointment, but the effort was vain.

The spires of the town and the college campus glittered white, the fields of barley and oats were fields of snow, the forest leaves had withered and fallen, and the river slumbered, wrapped in a sheeting of ice. Still I brooded over my failure, and when again the wild grass turned green I no longer cared. I was not the same man that had looked out at the waving grain and the blue haze only a year before. A gloomy despondency had settled upon me, and I grew to hate the students, to hate the college, to hate society. In the first shock of discovered failure I had given up all hope, and the Winter passed I knew not how. I never wondered if the trouble could be remedied. Now it suddenly occurred to me, perhaps it was no failure after all. The instrument might be made adjustable, so as to be sensible to faint or severe vibrations at pleasure of the operator, and thus separate the sounds. I remembered how but for the accidental removal of the ivory my instrument perhaps would not have reflected any sound. I would work again and persevere.

I would have resigned my professorship, only it might create suspicion. I knew not that already they viewed me with curious eyes and sober faces. When the session finally closed, they tried to persuade me to leave the college during vacation and travel on the continent. I would feel much fresher, they told me, in the Autumn. In the Autumn? Ay, perhaps I might, perhaps I might, and I would not go abroad.

Once more the reapers came unnoticed. My work progressed slowly. Day by day I toiled up in the old church tower, and night by night I dreamed. In my sleep it often seemed that the instrument was suddenly completed, but before I could raise it to my ear I would always waken with a nervous start. So the feverish time went by, and at last I held it ready for a second trial. Now the instrument was adjustable, and I had also improved it so far as to be able to set it very accurately for any particular period, thus rendering it sensible only to sounds of that time, all heavier and fainter vibrations being excluded.

I drew it out almost to its limits.

All the maddening doubts that had haunted me like grinning specters died. I felt no tremor, my hand was steady, my pulse-beat regular.

The soft breeze had fallen away. No leaf stirred in the quiet that seemed to await my triumph. Again the crimson splendor of sun-set illumined the western sky and made a glory overhead—and the dusk was thickening down below among the mouldering slabs. But that mattered not.

I raised the trumpet to my ear.

Hark!—The hum of mighty hosts! It rose and fell, fainter and more faint; then the murmur of water was heard and lost again, as it swelled and gathered and burst in one grand volume of sound like a hallelujah from myriad lips. Out of the resounding echo, out of the dying cadence a single female voice arose. Clear, pure, rich, it soared above the tumult of the host that hushed itself, a living thing. Higher, sweeter, it seemed to break the fetters of mortality and tremble in sublime adoration before the Infinite. My breath stilled with awe. Was it a spirit-voice—one of the glittering host in the jasper city “that had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it?” And the water, was it the river clear as crystal flowing from the great white throne? But no! The tone now floated out soft, sad, human. There was no sorrowful strain in that nightless land where the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations. The beautiful voice was of the earth and sin-stricken. From the sobbing that mingled with the faint ripple of water it went up once more, ringing gladly, joyfully; it went up inspired with praise to the sky, and—hark! the Hebrew tongue:—

“The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”

Then the noise of the multitude swelled again, and a crash of music broke forth from innumerable timbrels. I raised my head quickly—it was the song of Miriam after the passage of the Red Sea.

I knew not whether I lived.

I bent my ear eagerly to the instrument again and heard—the soft rustle, the breathing as of a sleeping forest. A plaintive note stole gently out, more solemn and quiet than the chant of the leaves. The mournful lay, forlorn, frightened, trembled on the air like the piteous wail of some wounded creature. Then it grew stronger. Clear, brilliant, it burst in a shower of silver sounds like a whole choir of birds in the glitter of the tropical sunlight. But the mournful wail crept back, and the lonely heartbroken strain was lost, while the leaves still whispered to one another in the midnight.

Like the light of a distant star came to me this song of some nightingale, thousands of years after the bird had mouldered to nothing.

At last my labor had been rewarded. As sound travels in waves, and these waves are continually advancing as they go round and round the world, therefore I would never hear the same sound over again at the same time, but it passed beyond and another came in its stead.

All night I listened with my ear pressed to the instrument. I heard the polished, well-studied compliments, the rustle of silks, and the quick music of the dance at some banquet. I could almost see the brilliant robes and glittering jewels of the waltzers, and the sheen of light, and the mirrors. But hush! a cry, a stifled moan. Was that at the——No, the music and the rustle of silk were gone.

“Mother, put your hand here,—I am tired, and my head feels hot and strange. Is it night, already, that it has grown so dark? I am resting now, for my book is almost done, and then, mother, we can go back to the dear old home where the sun shines so bright and the honeysuckles are heavy with perfume. And, mother, we will never be poor any more. I know you are weary, for your cheeks are pale and your fingers are thin; but they shall not touch a needle then, and you will grow better, mother, and we will forget these long, long, bitter years. I will not write in the evenings then, but sit with you and watch the twilight fade as we used to do, and listen to the murmur of the frogs. I described the little stream, our little stream, mother, in my book.—Hark! I hear the splash of its waves now. Hold me by the hand tight, mother. I am tired, but we are almost there. See! the house glimmers white through the trees, and the red bird has built its nest again in the cedar. Put your arm around me, mother, mother—”

Then single, echoless, the mother’s piercing cry went up—“O my God!”

Great Heaven! It would not always be music that I should hear. Into this ear, where all the world poured its tales, sorrow and suffering and death would come in turn with mirth and gladness.

I listened again. The long-drawn ahoy!—ahoy!—of the sailor rang out in slumbrous musical monotone, now free, now muffled—gone. The gleeful laugh of children at play, then the drunken boisterous shout of the midnight reveler—What was that? A chime of bells, strange, sublime, swimming in the air they made a cold, solemn harmony. But even over them dashed the storm-blast of passion that sweeps continually up and down the earth, and the harmony that bound them in peace broke up in a wild, angry clamor, that set loose shrill screams which were swallowed up in a savage tumult of discord, like a mad carnival of yelling demons. Then, as if terrified by their own fiendish rage, they retreated shivering, remorseful, and hushed themselves in hoarse whispers about the gray belfry. It was the Carillonneur, Matthias Vander Gheyn, playing at Louvain on the first of July, 1745.

Yes, my invention had proved a grand success. I had worked and worked in order to give this instrument to the world; but now when it was finished, strange to say, all my ambition, all my desire for fame left me, and I was anxious only to guard it from discovery, to keep it secret, to keep it more jealously than a miser hoards his gold. An undefinable delight filled my soul that I alone out of all humanity possessed this treasure, this great Ear of the World, for which kings might have given up their thrones. Ah! they dreamed not of the wonders I could relate. It was a keen, intense pleasure to see the public for which I had toiled live on, deaf forever save to the few transient sounds of the moment, while I, their slave, reveled in another world above, beyond their’s. But they should never have this instrument; no, not for kingdoms would I give it up, not for life itself.

It exerted a strange fascination over me, and in my eager desire to preserve my secret a tormenting fear suddenly took possession of me that some one might track me to the tower and discover all. It seemed as if the people looked after me with curious faces as I passed. I went no longer on the main road that led to the church, but, when I left my room, took an opposite direction until out of sight, and then made a circuit across the fields. I lived in a continual fear of betraying myself, so that at night I closed my window and door lest I might talk aloud in my sleep. I could never again bear the irksome duties of my office, and when the college reopened I gave up my situation and took lodgings in town. Still the dread of detection haunted me. Every day I varied my route to the church, and every day the people seemed to stare at me with a more curious gaze. Occasionally some of my old pupils came to visit me, but they appeared constrained in my presence and were soon gone. However, no one seemed to suspect my secret; perhaps all this was merely the work of my imagination, for I had grown watchful and reticent.

I hardly ate or slept. I lived perpetually in the past listening to the echoing song of the Alpine shepherd; the rich, uncultivated soprano of the Southern slave making strange wild melody. I heard grand organ fugues rolling, sweeping over multitudes that kneeled in awe, while a choir of voices broke into a gloria that seemed to sway the great cathedral. The thrilling artistic voices of the far past rang again, making my listening soul tremble in their magnificent harmony. It was music of which we could not dream.

Then suddenly I determined to try the opera once more; perhaps I was prejudiced: I had not been inside of a concert-room for more than a year.

I went down to London. It was just at the opening of the season. I could hardly wait that evening until the curtain rose; the orchestra was harsh and discordant, the house hot and disagreeable, the gas painfully bright. My restlessness had acquired a feverish pitch before the prima donna made her appearance. Surely that voice was not the one before which the world bowed! Malibran’s song stood out in my memory clearly defined and complete, like a magnificent cathedral of pure marble, with faultless arches and skillfully chiseled carvings, where the minarets rose from wreaths of lilies and vine-leaves cut in bas-relief, and the slender spire shot high, glittering yellow in the upper sunlight, its golden arrow, burning like flame, pointing towards the East. But this prima donna built only a flat, clumsy structure of wood ornamented by gaudily painted lattice. I left the opera amid the deafening applause of the audience with a smile of scorn upon my lips. Poor deluded creatures! they knew nothing of music, they knew not what they were doing.

I went to St. Paul’s on the Sabbath. There was no worship in the operatic voluntary sung by hired voices; it did not stir my soul, and their cold hymns did not warm with praise to the Divine Creator, or sway the vast pulseless congregation that came and went without one quickened breath.

All this time I felt a singular, inexpressible pleasure in the consciousness of my great secret, and I hurried back with eager haste. In London I had accidentally met two or three of my old acquaintances. I was not over glad to see them myself: as I have said, I had grown utterly indifferent to society; but I almost felt ashamed when they offered me every attention within their power, for I had not anticipated it, nor was it deserved on my part. Now, when I returned, every body in the street stopped to shake hands with me and inquire for my health. At first, although I was surprised at the interest they manifested, I took it merely as the common civility on meeting, but when the question was repeated so particularly by each one, I thought it appeared strange, and asked if they had ever heard to the contrary; no, oh no, they said, but still I was astonished at the unusual care with which they all made the same inquiry.

I went up to my room and walked directly to the glass. It was the first time I had consciously looked into a mirror for many weeks. Good Heavens! The mystery was explained now. I could hardly recognize myself. At first the shock was so great that I stood gazing, almost petrified. The demon of typhus fever could not have wrought a more terrific change in my face if he had held it in his clutches for months. My hair hung in long straggling locks around my neck. I was thin and fearfully haggard. My eyes sunken far back in my head, looked out from dark, deep hollows; my heavy black eyebrows were knit together by wrinkles that made seams over my forehead; my fleshless cheeks clung tight to the bone, and a bright red spot on either one was half covered by thick beard. I had thought so little about my personal appearance lately that I had utterly neglected my hair, and I wondered now that it had given me no annoyance. I smiled while I still looked at myself. This was the effect of the severe study and loss of sleep, and the excitement under which I had labored for months, yes, for more than a year. I had not been conscious of fatigue, but my work was done now and I would soon regain my usual weight. I submitted myself immediately to the hands of a barber, dressed with considerable care, and took another look in the glass. My face appeared pinched and small since it had been freed from beard. The caverns around my eyes seemed even larger, and the bright color in my cheeks contrasted strangely with the extremely sallow tint of my complexion. I turned away with an uncomfortable feeling, and started on a circuitous route to the church, for I never trusted my instrument in any other place.

It was a sober autumn day. Every thing looked dreary with that cold, gray, sunless sky stretched overhead. The half-naked trees shivered a little in their seared garments of ragged leaves. Occasionally a cat walked along the fence-top, or stood trembling on three legs. Sometimes a depressed bird suddenly tried to cheer its drooping spirits and uttered a few sharp, discontented chirps. Just in front of me two boys were playing ball on the roadside. As I passed I accidentally caught this sentence:

“They say the professor ain’t just right in his head.”

For a moment I stood rooted to the ground; then wheeled round and cried out fiercely, “What did you say?”

“Sir?”

“What was that you said just now?” I repeated still more fiercely.

The terrified boys looked at me an instant, then without answering turned and ran as fast as fright could carry them.

So the mystery now was really explained! It was not sick the people thought me, but crazy. I walked on with a queer feeling and began vaguely to wonder why I had been so savage to those boys. The fact which I had learned so suddenly certainly gave me a shock, but it was nothing to me. What did I care, even if the people did think me crazy? Ah! perhaps if I told my secret they would consider it a desperate case of insanity. But the child’s words kept ringing in my ears until an idea flashed upon me more terrifying than death itself. How did I know that I was not insane? How did I know that my great invention might be only an hallucination of my brain?

Instantly a whole army of thoughts crowded up like ghostly witnesses to affright me. I had studied myself to a shadow; my pallid face, with the red spots on the cheeks and the blue hollows around the eyes, came before my mental vision afresh. The fever in my veins told me I was unnaturally excited. I had not slept a sound, dreamless sleep for weeks. Perhaps in the long, long days and nights my brain, like my body, had been overwrought; perhaps in my eager desire to succeed, in my desperate determination, the power of my will had disordered my mind, and it was all deception: the sounds, the music I had heard, merely the creation of my diseased fancy, and the instrument I had handled useless metal. The very idea was inexpressible torture to me. I could not bear that a single doubt of its reality should exist; but, after once entering my head, how would I ever be able to free myself from distrust? I could not do it; I would be obliged to live always in uncertainty. It was maddening: now I felt as if I might have struck the child in my rage if I could have found him. Then suddenly it occurred to me, for the first time, that my invention could easily be tested by some other person. Almost instantly I rejected the thought, for it would compel me to betray my secret, and in my strange infatuation I would rather have destroyed the instrument. But the doubts of my sanity on this subject returned upon me with tenfold strength, and again I thought in despair of the only method left me by which they could ever be settled.

In the first shock, when the unlucky sentence fell upon my ear, I had turned after the boys, and then walked on mechanically towards the town. Now, when I looked up I found myself almost at the college gate. No one was to be seen, only Mother Flinse with her basket on her arm was just raising the latch. Half bewildered I turned hastily round and bent my steps in the direction of my lodgings, while I absently wondered whether that old woman had stood there ever since, since—when? I did not recollect, but her shadow was long and slim—no, there were no shadows this afternoon; it was sunless.

As I reached the stairs leading to my room, my trouble, which I had forgotten for the moment, broke upon me anew. I dragged myself up and sat down utterly overwhelmed. As I have said, I would sooner destroy the instrument than give it to a thankless world; but to endure the torturing doubt of its reality was impossible. Suddenly it occurred to me that Mother Flinse was mute. I might get her to test my invention without fear of betrayal, for she could neither speak nor write, and her signs on this subject, if she attempted to explain, would be altogether unintelligible to others. I sprang up in wild delight, then immediately fell back in my chair with a hoarse laugh—Mother Flinse was deaf as well as dumb. I had not remembered that. I sat quietly a moment trying to calm myself and think. Why need this make any difference? The instrument ought to, at least it was possible that it might, remedy loss of hearing. I too was deaf to these sounds in the air that it made audible. They would have to be magnified to a greater degree for her. I might set it for the present and use the full power of the instrument: there certainly would be no harm in trying, at any rate, and if it failed it would prove nothing, if it did not fail it would prove every thing. Then a new difficulty presented itself. How could I entice the old woman into the church?

I went back towards the college expecting to find her, but she was nowhere to be seen, and I smiled that only a few moments ago I had wondered if she did not always stand in the gateway. Once, I could not exactly recall the time, I had passed her hut. I remembered distinctly that there was a line full of old ragged clothes stretched across from the fence to a decayed tree, and a bright red flannel petticoat blew and flapped among the blackened branches. It was a miserable frame cabin, set back from the Spring road, about half a mile out of town. There I went in search of her.

The blasted tree stood out in bold relief against the drab sky. There appeared no living thing about the dirty, besmoked hovel except one lean rat, that squatted with quivering nose and stared a moment, then retreated under the loose plank before the door, leaving its smellers visible until I stepped upon the board. I knocked loudly without receiving any reply; then, smiling at the useless ceremony I had performed, pushed it open. The old woman, dressed in her red petticoat and a torn calico frock, with a faded shawl drawn over her head, was standing with her back towards me, picking over a pile of rags. She did not move. I hesitated an instant, then walked in. The moment I put my foot upon the floor she sprang quickly round. At first she remained motionless, with her small, piercing gray eyes fixed upon me, holding a piece of orange-and-black spotted muslin; evidently she recognized me, for, suddenly dropping it, she began a series of wild gestures, grinning until all the wrinkles of her skinny face converged in the region of her mouth, where a few scattered teeth, long and sharp, gleamed strangely white. A rim of grizzled hair stood out round the edge of the turbaned shawl and set off the withered and watchful countenance of the speechless old crone. The yellow, shriveled skin hung loosely about her slim neck like leather, and her knotted hands were brown and dry as the claws of an eagle.

I went through the motion of sweeping and pointed over my shoulder, making her understand that I wished her to do some cleaning. She drew the seams of her face into a new grimace by way of assent, and, putting the piece of orange-and-black spotted muslin around her shoulders in lieu of a cloak, preceded me out of the door. She started immediately in the direction of the college, and I was obliged to take hold of her before I could attract her attention; then, when I shook my head, she regarded me in surprise, and fell once more into a series of frantic gesticulations. With considerable trouble I made her comprehend that she was merely to follow me. The old woman was by no means dull, and her small, steel-gray eyes had a singular sharpness about them that is only found in the deaf-mute, where they perform the part of the ear and tongue. As soon as we came in sight of the church she was perfectly satisfied. I walked up to the main entrance, turned the knob and shook it, then suddenly felt in all my pockets, shook the door over, and felt through all my pockets again. This hypocritical pantomime had the desired effect. The old beldam slapped her hands together and poked her lean finger at the hole of the lock, apparently amused that I had forgotten the key. Then of her own accord she went round and tried the other doors, but without success. As we passed the narrow window in the rear I made a violent effort in knocking out the loose boards. The old woman seemed greatly delighted, and when I crawled through willingly followed. I gave her a brush, which fortunately one day I had discovered lying in the vestibule, and left her in the church to dust, while I went up in the tower to prepare and remove from sight all the tools which were scattered about. I put them in a recess and screened it from view by a map of the Holy Land. Then I took my instrument and carefully adjusted it, putting on its utmost power.

In about an hour I went down and motioned to Mother Flinse that I wanted her up stairs. She came directly after me without hesitation, and I felt greatly relieved, for I saw that I would likely have no trouble with the old woman. When we got into the tower she pointed down to the trees and then upward, meaning, I presume, that it was high. I nodded, and taking the instrument placed my ear to it for a moment. A loud blast of music, like a dozen bands playing in concert, almost stunned me. She watched me very attentively, but when I made signs for her to come and try she drew back. I held up the instrument and went through all manner of motions indicating that it would not hurt her, but she only shook her head. I persevered in my endeavor to coax her until she seemed to gain courage and walked up within a few feet of me, then suddenly stopped and stretched out her hands for the instrument. As she did not seem afraid, provided she had it herself, I saw that she took firm hold.

In my impatience to know the result of this experiment, I was obliged to repeat my signs again and again before I could prevail upon her to raise it to her ear. Then breathlessly I watched her face, a face I thought which looked as if it might belong to some mummy that had been withering for a thousand years. Suddenly it was convulsed as if by a galvanic shock, then the shriveled features seemed to dilate, and a great light flashed through them, transforming them almost into the radiance of youth; a strange light as of some seraph had taken possession of the wrinkled old frame and looked out at the gray eyes, making them shine with unnatural beauty. No wonder the dumb countenance reflected a brightness inexpressible, for the Spirit of Sound had just alighted with silvery wings upon a silence of seventy years.

A heavy weight fell unconsciously from my breast while I stood almost awed before this face, which was transfigured, as if it might have caught a glimmer of that mystical morn when, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed.

My instrument had stood the test; it was proved forever. I could no longer cherish any doubts of its reality, and an indescribable peace came into my soul, like a sudden awakening from some frightful dream. I had not noticed the flight of time. A pale shadow hung already over the trees—yes, and under them on the slime-covered stones. Ay! and a heavier shadow than the coming night was even then gathering unseen its rayless folds. The drab sky had blanched and broken, and the sinking sun poured a fading light through its ragged fissures.

The old woman, as if wrapped in an enchantment, had hardly moved. I tried vainly to catch her attention; she did not even appear conscious of my presence. I walked up and shook her gently by the shoulder, and, pointing to the setting sun, held out my hand for the instrument. She looked at me a moment, with the singular unearthly beauty shining through every feature; then suddenly clutching the trumpet tight between her skinny claws, sprang backward towards the stairs, uttering a sound that was neither human nor animal, that was not a wail or a scream, but it fell upon my ears like some palpable horror. Merciful Heaven! Was that thing yonder a woman? The shriveled, fleshless lips gaped apart, and a small pointed tongue lurked behind five glittering, fang-like teeth. The wild beast had suddenly been developed in the hag. Like a hungry tigress defending its prey, she stood hugging the trumpet to her, glaring at me with stretched neck and green eyes.

A savage fierceness roused within me when I found she would not give up the instrument, and I rushed at her with hands ready to snatch back the prize I valued more than my life—or hers; but, quicker than a hunted animal, she turned and fled with it down the stairs, making the tower ring with the hideous cries of her wordless voice. Swiftly—it seemed as if the danger of losing the trumpet gave me wings to fly in pursuit—I crossed the vestibule. She was not there. Every thing was silent, and I darted with fleet steps down the dusky aisle of the church, when suddenly the jarring idiotic sounds broke loose again, echoing up in the organ-pipes and rattling along the galleries. The fiend sprang from behind the altar, faced about an instant with flashing eyes and gleaming teeth, then fled through the vestry-room into the passage. The sight of her was fresh fuel to my rage, and it flamed into a frenzy that seemed to burn the human element out of my soul. When I gained the steps leading into the coal-room she was already in the window, but I cleared the distance at a single bound and caught hold of her clothes as she leaped down. I crawled through, but she clutched the instrument tighter. I could not prize it out of her grasp; and in her ineffectual efforts to free herself from my hold she made loud, grating cries, that seemed to me to ring and reverberate all through the forest; but presently they grew smothered, gurgled, then ceased. Her clasp relaxed in a convulsive struggle, and the trumpet was in my possession. It was easily done, for her neck was small and lean, and my hands made a circle strong as a steel band.

The tremor died out of her frame and left it perfectly still. Through the silence I could hear the hiss of a snake in the nettle-weeds, and the flapping wings of some night bird fanned my face as it rushed swiftly through the air in its low flight. The gray twilight had deepened to gloom and the graves seemed to have given up their tenants. The pale monuments stood out like shrouded specters. But all the dead in that church-yard were not under ground, for on the wet grass at my feet there was something stark and stiff, more frightful than any phantom of imagination—something that the daylight would not rob of its ghastly features. It must be put out of sight, yes, it must be hid, to save my invention from discovery. The old hag might be missed, and if she was found here it would ruin me and expose my secret. I placed the trumpet on the window-ledge, and, carrying the grim burden in my arms, plunged into the damp tangle of weeds and grass.

In a lonesome corner far back from the church, in the dense shade of thorn-trees, among the wild brambles where poisonous vines grew, slippery with the mould of forgotten years, unsought, uncared for by any human hand, was a tomb. Its sides were half buried in the tall underbrush, and the long slab had been broken once, for a black fissure ran zigzag across the middle. In my muscles that night there was the strength of two men. I lifted off one-half of the stone and heard the lizards dart startled from their haunt, and felt the spiders crawl. When the stone was replaced it covered more than the lizards or the spiders in the dark space between the narrow walls.

As I have said, the instrument possessed a singular fascination over me. I had grown to love it, not alone as a piece of mechanism for the transmission of sound, but like a living thing, and I replaced it in the tower with the same pleasure one feels who has rescued a friend from death. My listening ear never grew weary, but now I drew quickly away. It was not music I heard, or the ripple of water, or the prattle of merry tongues, but the harsh grating cries that had echoed in the church, that had rattled and died out in the forest—that voice which was not a voice. I shivered while I readjusted the instrument; perhaps it was the night wind which chilled me, but the rasping sounds were louder than before. I could not exclude them. There was no element of superstition in my nature, and I tried it over again: still I heard them—sometimes sharp, sometimes only a faint rumbling. Had the soul of the deaf-mute come in retribution to haunt me and cry eternally in my instrument? Perhaps on the morrow it would not disturb me, but there was no difference. I could hear only it, though I drew out the trumpet for vibrations hundreds of years old. I had rid myself of the withered hag who would have stolen my treasure, but now I could not rid myself of her invisible ghost. She had conquered, even through death, and come from the spirit world to gain possession of the prize for which she had given up her life. The instrument was no longer of any value to me, though cherishing a vague hope I compelled myself to listen, even with chattering teeth; for it was a terrible thing to hear these hoarse, haunting cries of the dumb soul—of the soul I had strangled from its body, a soul which I would have killed itself if it were possible. But my hope was vain, and the trumpet had become not only worthless to me, but an absolute horror.

Suddenly I determined to destroy it. I turned it over ready to dash it in pieces, but it cost me a struggle to crush this work of my life, and while I stood irresolute a small green-and-gold beetle crawled out of it and dropped like a stone to the floor. The insect was an electric flash to me, that dispelled the black gloom through which I had been battling. It had likely fallen into the instrument down in the church-yard, or when I laid it upon the window-sill, and the rasping of its wings, magnified, had produced the sounds which resembled the strange grating noise uttered by the deaf-mute.

Instantly I put the trumpet to my ear. Once more the music of the past surged in. Voices, leaves, water, all murmured to me their changeful melody; every zephyr wafting by was filled with broken but melodious whispers.

Relieved from doubts, relieved from fears and threatening dangers, I slept peacefully, dreamlessly as a child. With a feeling of rest to which I had long been unused, I walked out in the soft clear morning. Every thing seemed to have put on new life, for the sky was not gray or sober, and the leaves, if they were brown, trimmed their edges in scarlet, and if many had fallen, the squirrels played among them on the ground. But suddenly the sky and the leaves and the squirrels might have been blotted from existence. I did not see them, but I saw—I saw Mother Flinse come through the college gateway and walk slowly down the road!

The large faded shawl pinned across her shoulders nearly covered the red flannel petticoat, and the orange-and-black spotted muslin was wrapped into a turban on her head. Without breathing, almost without feeling, I watched the figure until at the corner it turned out of sight, and a long dark outline on the grass behind it ran into the fence. The shadow! Then it was not a ghost. Had the grave given up its dead? I would see.

At the church-yard the briers tore my face and clothes, but I plunged deeper where the shade thickened under the thorn-trees. There in the corner I stooped to lift the broken slab of a tomb, but all my strength would not avail to move it. As I leaned over, bruising my hands in a vain endeavor to raise it, my eyes fell for an instant on the stone, and with a start I turned quickly and ran to the church; then I stopped—the narrow fissure that cut zigzag across the slab on the tomb was filled with green moss, and this window was nailed up, and hung full of heavy cobwebs.

And my instrument?

Suddenly, while I stood there, some substance in my brain seemed to break up—it was the fetters of monomania which had bound me since that evening long ago, when, by the river in the oak-forest, I had heard the robin trill.

No murder stained my soul: and there, beside the black waves of insanity through which I had passed unharmed, I gave praise to the great Creator—praise silent, but intense as Miriam’s song by the sea.

THE PATHS OF THE SEA.

Around the porch there hung that day a crimson glory. It was the climbing rose about the door displaying its gorgeous bloom in a thousand crowns. Green, grass-green were the hills, but in front of the house the cliff fell abruptly, with a precipitous drop, to the sea. On either side the waving coast-line stretched away, a shining belt of yellow sand. There the breakers with unfurled banners of fleece followed each other in a never ending procession to the shore. But at the foot the billows, by day and night running in forever, dashed against the rock and chopped to a seething foam that threw up in one continual briny shower its white and glittering spray.

The surf at this point, even in pleasant weather, sounded a constant roar, and in times of storm it increased to a deafening thunder that appalled the ear and made the heart tremble before the sea in its savage ferocity. Looking off to the right, perhaps the greater part of a mile distant, the harbor discovered itself, blue, bluer than the sky. A few vessels that had grown mysteriously upon the empty horizon, and come in over the vast waste of waters, were idly lying at anchor, each one biding her time to spread her sails in the breeze and recede upon her lonely course, going, as she had come, like some spirit of solitude, dropping down silently beyond the remote sea-reaches. There the Nereid swung herself gently over the long ground-swell, patiently awaiting the coming night when again to take up her watery track that would carry her over the great Atlantic to other lands and far-off harbors. Not a trimmer ship sailed the high seas.

The sun had traveled almost down the western slope, and it lit up the mighty ocean with a splendor that burned in lances of flame along the waves, and floated in myriad rainbows over the surf. The pomp of the departing day passed across the boundless waters, a magnificent pageantry. As the sun went down, the sky became a scarlet canopy. The flying spray took up the color and spread out a thousand streamers to the wind. Long, gold-green lanes of sea ran out to where the distant mists let down their gorgeous drapery. The tireless gulls, shaking the red light from their wings, sailed and sailed and dipped and sailed again. A few fishing smacks loitered in the orange haze, and, leagues away, a single sloop in the humid north stood, like some wan water-wraith, with a garland of foam about its feet. Eastward, above the hills, the waiting moon hung her helmet, paler than pearl, and the land, transfigured by the evening light, looked on while the sea in its play flashed up a hundred hues.

The widow Aber had lived there on the cliff and seen the tides ebb and flow for more now than the quarter of a century. She was not a young girl when, twenty-six years back, poor Jacob Aber had married her. It was a sudden fancy on his part and a great surprise to the place, for Jacob was well on towards fifty, and many a girl had set her cap to catch the handsome sailor in vain. But he never rued his bargain. He was not a rich man, because he had always been a generous man, and he was content with enough merely to bring him in a modest living. When he married he took what little he had and built this cottage, built it of brick good and strong, where he could feel the salt wind blow, right in the face of the sea—the sea that, until he met Miriam Drew with her soft gray eyes, he had loved better than every thing else in all the wide world.

They were happy and prosperous for four long years. First a son, then a daughter had come to brighten their home, and it was on just such an evening as this that Miriam, holding her infant child in her arms, told Jacob good-bye two-and-twenty years ago.

It would be his last cruise, he said. The vessel was his own, and in twelve months, or less, he would come back rich enough to stay always, and if the tears were in his voice he choked them down bravely, saying again it was but for a little while he should be gone, and she must cheer up for the long and happy years that would come after.

Then she suddenly laid down her child and with a smothered sob put up her arms about his neck. It was the first time she had fairly given way, and she clung to him trembling violently, but uttering not one word. He smoothed her brow gently, with a caressing touch, for her sake keeping his own grief crushed within his heart, and said,—

“Miriam don’t you remember once saying you could always tell a sailor by the dreamy far-off look in his eyes, an expression that came only to those that lived upon the sea and watched its wide, wide fields? And don’t you remember sometimes when I was sitting quietly at home you would come up suddenly and ask me what it was I saw miles and miles away, over the summer water, in that distant sunny land? Well, do not cry so, for even when my ship has vanished from your sight, when on every side there is no trace of shore, I can stand upon her deck and look beyond the far horizon at our peaceful, happy home. And when at evening, with your eyes upon the sea, you sit and hold the children in your lap, remember I will be watching you from across its glittering line. There, that is right! You are a good, brave girl! It is but for a little while. I can look beyond this parting—I can see your waiting face turn radiant as my boat sails safely back!”

Then, when he had kissed her and the little ones, and turned and kissed them again, there was a faint smile struggling through her tears. So, striving to keep down her grief, she parted without saying one word of the terrible dread that lay upon her heart.

And two-and-twenty years ago he had sailed away.

Many days, many nights, many weeks, many months, Miriam had watched the sea with wistful eyes. For his sake she had very nearly grown to love it, and the color came again to her cheeks as the time went by and the year was almost up, when it would give back forever the one she valued more than life. In those days she scanned the water-line, and waited patiently, and went about the house singing. She chattered to her baby-daughter all how its father was sailing home, until it laughed and cooed in wild delight. Every morning she dressed little Tommy in his best, and tied about his waist the beautiful sea-green sash that Jacob had brought her from the distant Indies; and in the queer frosted vases on the mantel, that had come from some foreign port, she kept a fresh bouquet of sweet wild flowers.

But poor Jacob never came back.

Homeward bound, his vessel was wrecked off the treacherous Newfoundland shore. A storm drove her helpless, enshrouded in fog, against the rocks where she foundered, and captain and crew went down together. Only two men escaped from the terrible disaster.

When the dreadful news came and they told Miriam as they met her on the porch, she made no reply. She did not moan or scream. She only looked out for a moment at the deceitful sea, smiling in its sheen of a thousand tints, then turned and went into the house and shut the door.

She had always been a strange woman, and they left her to bear her grief alone. She asked nobody’s sympathy, she did not complain, she never spoke of Jacob. She did not, as the people had expected, sell her house. She made no change so far as the world could see, only that she held herself, if possible, more aloof from society than ever. But before three months had gone by they noticed that her brown and shining hair had turned white, and her gray eyes showed half concealed within their depths an unfathomed trouble. Then too, her figure, once erect and straight as a dart, grew bent and stooped across the shoulders, and nothing ever brought the color to her face any more that was always pale and thin. Otherwise, however, there appeared no difference. She lived economically, and sometimes took in a small amount of fine sewing, as, beside the house, she had little else, for the sea when it buried her husband had buried his earnings also in the same watery grave.

She staid at home and watched the children in whom her life was now wholly bound up. They were her world, her all. She seemed to find in them her very existence, and after the queer frosted vases on the mantel had stood empty for years, their young hands filled them again with sweet wild flowers. So the house once more was bright and sunny, and, though Miriam herself never sang, Hannah’s voice was clear and happy.

Hannah had grown up the very picture of her mother when in her early girlhood, but young Tom was like his father. He was like his father in more respects than one, and while still a boy the people said he too will prove a sailor. They were right; though Miriam had struggled against it and watched over him with an absorbing care. She saw again developed in him the same wild fascination for the sea. She knew its strength and that it must prevail, and when he came and begged so hard, with the well remembered far-off look in his eyes, she felt all opposition would be vain.

She did not reproach herself that she had lived upon the coast and played with him upon the beach, for something in her heart told her that it could have been no different, even had she raised him up in another place where the sound of the sea would not have been always in his ears. She recognized in this fatal love the heritage he had received from his father. The thought that it could be eradicated, that he would ever be satisfied with any thing else she knew to be hopeless, and so the widow had given up, and he had gone at fourteen to seek his fortune, like his father before him, a sailor on the high seas.

Now, ten years later, and two-and-twenty years since poor Jacob had started on his fateful cruise, young Tom was ready for his fourth voyage. He had climbed unaided several steps up the ladder in his calling, and the Nereid, waiting down in the harbor would carry him in a few hours, her first mate, out upon her long two years’ absence. It was a great lift to him, for, besides his promotion, Luke Denin, who this time commanded the ship, had been his early friend. There was but little difference in their age. They had been boys together, and together they had explored the shore for miles and fished for days, and they had rambled the hills and the woods over; so, as young Tom said, it would be just as good for him as if he commanded the Nereid himself.

When he told his mother this she had only patted him on the head, and said in a choked voice,—“My little sailor boy!”

The widow Aber, ever since her son took to following the sea, had been gradually breaking. From that time her health, heretofore always strong and robust, began perceptibly to decline. The people noticed it, but then she told them that she was getting old—how could they expect a woman well up into the sixties to be as active as a girl, and besides this she had the rheumatism. So she was constantly excusing her feebleness with anxious care, as if she feared they might attribute it to some other cause than age.

This evening she was even weaker than usual, though she did not acknowledge it, but sitting at the supper table her hands trembled so badly that the cups and saucers rattled a little as she served the tea. Miriam, whose life had been one constant struggle, was struggling still. No wonder the widow was proud of her son, her only son. Her gray eyes, beautiful as in her youth, would wander to him again and again, and rest upon his face with a strange, yearning expression, but whenever he turned to her she would drop them quickly and move a little nervously in her chair, striving to conceal, as she had done so many years ago, the burden of grief that lay at her heart.

It was a pleasant party to look at, for Luke Denin too was there, and the young people carefully avoided any allusion to the separation before them. Tom, always gay and happy, was more than handsome in his sailor’s dress, with the bronze of the tropical sun upon his face. And Luke, if he was not so tall by half a head, and if his hair, instead of being black and crisp with waves, was light and straight, had at least as honest and frank a pair of deep blue eyes as Hannah cared to see—not that Hannah looked at them, for she looked only at her plate, and once in a while anxiously at her mother. Young Tom was evidently determined that this last meal at home should not be a sorrowful one, as he kept up the conversation in his liveliest mood. He told wonderful tales in such an absurd vein of exaggeration, that sometimes it even called up a smile on the widow’s face; and when the meal was over he picked her up playfully in his strong arms and carried her out upon the porch. There together they all watched the moonlight gradually show itself out of the dissolving day, in long paths across the water. Then the hour came to say good-bye.

It was a desperate battle for Miriam, as she clung to her son in that parting moment. Then it was, for the first time, that something in her face went to the man’s inmost heart like a chill. She was old and frail, and his absence would be long, perhaps he might never look upon her again. In his wild fascination for the sea, was he not sacrificing her? The anguish of the thought overcame him. Had it been possible then he would have given up this voyage and staid at home, but it was too late now, and when he had turned for a moment, and with a strong effort fought his grief under control, he said gently,—

“No, no! Do not be so distressed, mother! It is all for the best; and when I come back this time, mother, I will never leave you any more.”

But Miriam, thinking of that other parting so long ago, remembered that Jacob, too, had said when he came back he would never leave her any more, and with a half suppressed cry she clasped her hands tighter about his neck.

“O, my son, you will come back! Only promise me you will come back, and I can wait patiently and long!”

There was a wild energy in her voice that frightened him, as she went on hurriedly with an accent he had never heard till then,—

“Once before, with this same dread at my heart, I parted two-and-twenty years ago, but I let him go without saying a word. I waited patiently. I even sang and tried to be happy. As the time went by I laughed as I thought how pleased he would be when he saw how his children had grown. I tied about your waist a sash of his favorite color, that he had brought me from the distant Indies, and I kept every thing in readiness for—what? They came and told me that he had gone down at sea—No, no; do not interrupt me. I let him go without saying a word. I must speak this time!”

She paused for a moment as if waiting until her excitement had calmed, and with her trembling hand put back the hair from his forehead, then went on unsteadily in a tone but little louder than a whisper,—

“You have the same dreamy far-off look in your eyes. I know you must go my child, I know you can not resist—but when your father left he said it would be only for a little while, and I—I have waited two-and-twenty years.”

There was another moment of silence, as though her thoughts had gone back over that long, long watch, then, in a wavering voice, she went on once more, calling him again unconsciously by the name she had used when he was a little child,—

“Tommy, Tommy! my boy, my only boy! if you—if the cruel sea—O, I can not say it, I can not bear it! You will come back, you must come back to me!”

A wild terror had crept into her face, then she broke down completely.

“There, forgive me, Tommy, forgive me! I did not used to be so foolish. Do not mind me. I am getting old and feeble, Tommy—I am not strong any more, but—I can wait again—”

“Why, mother, there is no danger. Look,” he said, drawing his arm close about her, “how peaceful is the sea! After you, mother, I love it better than any thing else in the whole world. It has always been gentle to me—you need not fear, I will surely come back, surely—if—if you can only wait.”

Tom’s voice had grown thick and choked, as he added the last words, and when Miriam, anxious to atone for her past weakness, said quickly,—

“Yes, yes, Tommy, I can wait—” he made her repeat it. Then rallying himself he went on gaily,—

“Why, I will come back, mother, I will come back so grand and rich that you shall be three times as proud of me, you shall, indeed! And I will take care of you always then. But, mother,” he said, the choking sensation coming again in his throat,—“promise that you will not worry about me while I am gone, or I shall never be happy, not even in any of the beautiful lands I will see—won’t you promise me, mother? Promise me that you will wait patiently, promise me that—that you will not give up—”

“Yes, yes, Tommy, if you will only come back, I can wait again—I can even wait a long while.”

“It will not be so very long! why the time will slip by, and almost before you know it you will find me standing beside you here again, when I mean you to be so proud of me that it will well nigh turn my head.”

“Ah, Tommy, you know I am proud of you now, so proud of you, that sometimes it fairly frightens me, and I dare not think of it.”

“Heaven knows,” he said, all the gay sound dying from his voice, as, stricken with remorse, he remembered the many times he had left her with no thought beyond the parting moment, “I’m not much to be proud of, but, mother—” taking up her thin hand and passing it over his face, once more driven to the last extremity to command his voice—“you and Nan are all I have on earth to care for me, and out in midocean, or in the far-off foreign ports, your love, like a constant prayer to keep me from harm, will be with me always. When I am at home once more I am going to be a good boy to you, mother. Nothing, not even the sea, shall ever part us again.”

“You have always been a good boy to me, Tommy—I only thought—I was afraid that—O never mind, I can wait for you, Tommy. I do not feel so nervous now.”

“There, that is right! We will meet again, mother, and then we will be very, very happy.”

He kissed her yearningly, reverentially. It seemed as if he stood awed before the heart that for a moment had disclosed itself in its most silent depths, and in that moment there had been revealed to him, with all its overwhelming strength, that divine love which is mightier than life. It seemed as if now, for the first time, and almost blinded by the revelation, he saw—his mother.

After a little silence, taking her face between his hands, he said, gently,—

“Mother, I want to see you smile once more before I go.”

“I will wait for you, Tommy,” she said again.

“And I will surely come back.”

When Miriam looked up there was a faint smile struggling through her tears, as there had been once before, two-and-twenty years in the past. Then he was gone.

Down by the gate Hannah stood, trying to hide in the shadow of the great honeysuckle the new shy beauty on her face that had been called there by the kiss of warmer lips than the gentle sea-breeze.

“Good-bye, Nan,” said Tom, unsuspiciously, throwing his arms about her in his rough brotherly embrace,—“why how you are trembling! You are not going to cry? Don’t, I can’t stand it!”

“No, no,” came uncertainly in a helpless voice, evidently, in her wild conflict of emotion, not knowing exactly what she was going to do.

“There, that’s right! Don’t cry, or I’ll—I’ll break down too!” said Tom, hoarsely, fairly strangling in his throat, and almost worn out by the strain he had undergone.

Hannah, surprised, raised her face, but Tom had already got the better of himself. “How your eyes shine to-night, Nan; I did not know how pretty you were before!” Down went her head again immediately, and changing his voice he said, with a sigh,—“Nannie, there ain’t many fellows that have as good a mother and sister as mine; you won’t forget me while I’m gone, or get tired waiting? I’ve been a worthless, roving chap; I’ve never been of much comfort to you or mother, but when I come back next time, I’m going to stay at home a while. Look up now and tell me you are glad.”

“O, Tom, I am! You don’t know how glad I am, if it was only for mother’s sake.”

Then, turning his head away to hide the anguish that had come over his face, he asked, slowly, trying rather ineffectually to keep his voice natural,—“You don’t think, Nan, any thing will happen to her while I am gone?”

“What do you mean?” said Hannah, struck by the awe in his tone.

“I mean,” he said, unwilling to trouble his sister by the thought that had so oppressed him, and speaking gaily again: “I mean that you must be a good girl, and keep up mother’s spirits, but don’t get so used to my absence, that neither of you will care when I come back.”

“O, Tom!”

“Come out into the moonlight where I can see you. I’m dreadfully proud of you, Nan, because you don’t take on like other girls. You see I couldn’t have stood it!” said Tom, in a frightfully uncertain state of mind, as to whether it was possible to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m going now. Be good to mother, you know she’s—she’s not very strong—Have you told Captain Denin good-bye?”

“No, she hasn’t. Not yet. I thought I’d let you do it first; but you’ll tell me good-bye now, until I come back never to say it again, won’t you, Nanine?” said Luke, coming up in his most masterly way, right under Tom’s very nose, and almost hiding his sister from view in an embrace that this time was neither rough nor brotherly.

“Whew!” gasped Tom, as Hannah came in sight again, with no friendly honeysuckle near to conceal the carnation bloom upon her cheeks. “Is that the way the wind blows! I’ve been as blind as a bat. Kiss me, quick, both of you, or I’m a gone case!”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Sit down on the stone there, and recover yourself. You’ve said your good-bye, now just wait for me!” said the superior officer triumphantly. And Tom, spent, exhausted, sank down; but the next instant Hannah had her arms tight about his neck, and was hiding her face against the crisp waves of his black hair.

“Tom, dear, you ain’t sorry?”

“No, Nan, I couldn’t have wished for any thing better; but it was so sudden, it just kind of knocked the wind out of my sails for a minute.” Then, after a pause,—“I say, there’ll be a grand glorification when the Nereid comes back, won’t there?”

“Yes.”

“I—I wish it was back now! I don’t know what’s upset me so—There, kiss her, Luke, and let’s be off, quick, or I’ll disgrace myself outright, before I know it!” and Tom, gulping down great quantities of air with all his might, got up from the stone hurriedly, as if he meditated making a sudden bolt.

But he did not. He stood there quietly looking out at sea; and when, a moment after, the young captain, taking his arm, said, “Come, now I am ready,” he started as from a dream. Turning to his sister, with every trace of his rollicking manner lost, he said, as though he had not spoken of her before,—

“You must take good care of mother—poor mother. Do not let her grieve while I am gone. Oh, Hannah, you will be very careful of her, and not allow any thing—not allow her to get tired, and tell her always, while she waits, that when I am with her again, I will never leave her.”

Then they had passed through the gate and were going rapidly down the narrow foot-path to the bottom of the hill. Hannah strained her eyes after them, and when at the turn of the road both brother and lover were lost to view, still she lingered at the spot pondering over Tom’s unwonted emotion. It was not like him. Never before had she seen him so singularly affected, and now that he was gone, it came back to her with redoubled intensity. The unusual sorrow that had almost choked him, the strange tone in his voice that he had tried vainly to conceal, the sudden wish that the Nereid was back even now, his repeated charges about their mother, all troubled her.

An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight and still, covered on one side with a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but this time she started violently and shivered. It seemed as if the summer night had suddenly grown cold and chilled her to the heart, and with hurried steps she ran back to the house.

The porch was deserted and strangely lonesome when she passed across. Even the crimson bloom, with its thousand crowns, looked black through the shade, as if it had withered in the hour, and she heard its leaves make a weird rustle, like a complaint, as she closed the door. The sense of desolation was so strong upon her that she could hardly keep from crying out in the solitude, but she went on swiftly to her mother’s room, and entered with noiseless feet. A great sigh of relief came to her lips when she saw the peaceful face upon the pillow, for Miriam, overcome by the reaction, already slept calmly as a child. Hannah sat down beside the bed. There was a smile upon her mother’s lips. How long she sat there, whether one hour, or two hours, she did not know, but when she got up all the tumult in her heart had subsided.

She kissed the sleeping face gently and went quietly up stairs to her own room. She threw the shutters open wide, and lo! out upon the sea with her wings spread, white as the plumage of a gull, the Nereid! Lonely, spirit-like, beyond the reach of voice, she stood upon the mighty desert of the ocean. Before her prow the waves held out their wreath of down, and above, solitary in the vast moonlit sky, hung the royal planet Jupiter. Steady, radiant, it burned like the magic Star in the East. Hannah, watching, saw the ship fade away in the far-off endless isles of silver mist. A great peace had come to her soul, and when she lay down to sleep there was no trouble on her face. Gone, the Nereid was gone, but still, even in her dreams, she knew that the star in the sky was shining.

Slowly the days came and went. Miriam, yet a little feebler, was bright and happy. Never, since that night when she said good-bye, had she murmured or uttered a word of complaint. Every thing at the cottage glided smoothly on; for Hannah attended to the house, and waited upon her mother with an untiring care, but even while she went about performing her different duties her eyes, unconsciously, would wander off to sea. Often in the afternoon, when the widow nodded in the great rocking chair by the window, she would slip away down to the beach, and sit there by the hour.

Those were pleasant days to Hannah. Then the sea, clear and calm, rounded out, a great circle of splendor, to the horizon; or on its surface the giant mists reared themselves, triumphant, in towering arches. Perhaps her thoughts went out beyond these mighty phantom aisles, seeking always the two loved ones across their portals, over the vast and solemn ocean. Sometimes when the sky was warm and the wind blew shoreward it seemed to bring faintly the scent of foreign flowers; for nearer now to her were those mystical lands where Summer, almighty Summer, sat upon an everlasting throne.

Hannah knew every vessel that sailed into port; and sometimes a boat, returning, had spoken the Nereid at sea, sometimes at long intervals a letter came. Then when for weeks, for months it might be, there was no word, no sign, the royal planet, moving in its eternal orbit, hung again in the sky, a star of promise. To Hannah, as she watched it night after night above the sea, it came as a messenger bearing glad tidings of great joy.

So the time waned. The peaceful days passed by and fierce storms broke with a savage roar upon the coast. The green upon the hill-sides faded out, and the freezing spray encrusted the cliff with ice where the wintry sea threw up its bitter brine—and sometimes, farther off upon the shelving beach, it threw up more than brine, or stiffened weed. Broken spars, dreary fragments of wrecks drifted in, told of the wild desolation out upon the hoarse wilderness of beaten waves.

But even those days too passed, and the Spring clothed the land again with emerald. More than a year had worn away since the Nereid had faded out of the horizon, and presently another Fall set in.

For five months no word had come from the absent wanderers. Still Miriam made not the least complaint. Even when the storms lashed the sea, until it sent up a roar that made the young girl shiver, the widow evinced no anxiety. Had she not promised that she would wait patiently? She talked very little, and generally sat quietly by the window from morning till evening. But Hannah, saying nothing, had grown heavy-hearted with the long silence.

It was November, a dull, dreary day in November. Heavy clouds stretched themselves in a somber, leaden sky, that near the water gathered dark and frowning. The gray sea, cold and hoarse, uttered eternally its hollow roar. But for this it seemed as if a mighty silence would have brooded over earth and ocean, a silence vast and dreadful as the grave. Dead white, the hungry surf crawled sullenly up the sand. Leagues away the fishing smacks all headed to shore, and the gulls were flying landward, when Hannah looking out, counted a new sail in the harbor.

Any word to break this long heart-sick watch?

Quick she had her hat, and glancing at her mother sleeping tranquilly in the great chair, she ran out, without shawl or wrapping, and started down the hill. Once at the bottom she slackened her pace a little to gain breath. A fine drizzle already blew through the air, and the waters running in upon the smooth beach did not rumble with a great noise as at the foot of the cliff, but washed, washed, keeping up endlessly a weary lamentation. The damp settled on her hair in minute globules, and enveloped all her clothing in its clammy embrace, but she did not heed the weather. She never looked out once at the desolate, rainy sea, she hardly heard its solemn moan. Hurrying, hurrying, she went on swiftly with the one idea absorbing every power. Rapidly, half-running, half-walking, she never paused until she reached the slippery wharf.

A group of sailors parted to let her pass. So eager was she that she did not hear the sudden exclamations, or see the look of pity that had come upon more than one rough sunburnt face when she made her appearance; for living all her life in the same quiet village many of the sailors knew Hannah by sight, many by her gentle manner and kind words, and many a sailor’s wife had to thank her as a guardian angel when sickness and poverty had come upon them unawares. She, flurried, her heart throbbing with expectation, saw only it was the good ship Bonibird that had come to port. Stephen, old Steve, belonged to it now! She remembered him well. Often when she was a child had he given her curious shells, and once he had brought her, in a little bowl filled with seawater, a tiny, live fish that glittered all over with beautiful colors. Oh yes, she remembered him well! Surprised and pleased she turned to look for him among the groups of sailors, but the old man was already at her side.

Stained and weather-beaten old Steve stood there with his cap off, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and when with an exclamation of joy Hannah held out her hand, he took it eagerly between his rough palms.

“God bless you! God bless you!” broke from his lips in a thick utterance; then he dropped her hand nervously, and drawing his breath hard passed his sleeve hurriedly across his face.

“I’m glad to see you back, Stephen,” she said. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Yes, you beant so tall then.”

“Is there any news from the Nereid?” she asked eagerly, hardly noticing his last reply.

The old man seemed fairly to break out in a violent perspiration. He moved again uneasily on his feet and, turning his head from her, mopped his face once more hurriedly with his sleeve.

“I’m——I’m feared thar be a storm comin’ up, Miss. Those clouds over the water do look ugly, and the gulls be all flyin’ land’ard.”

“Never mind, I’m not afraid of the storm!” she said, impatiently.

“Why you be all wet now, standin’ out in this nasty drizzle.”

“No, no, I don’t care! I want to know if you heard any thing from the Nereid. Why don’t you tell me?” an alarm gathering quickly in her voice as the first sickening suspicion came over her. “O Stephen,” she said, with a terrified cry that fairly frightened the man, “you have, and there is something wrong! O the Nereid—the Nereid is not lost! Say it is not lost!”

She had caught the man’s arm in her wild excitement, and clung to him trembling like a leaf from head to foot.

“Why, no, no!” he said, scared by the girl’s dreadful agitation; “the Nereid be all right, she be all right! I didn’t think of sich an idee comin’ to you, or I’d a said afore she be all right. Thar beant nothin’ the matter with her, nothin’, I was aboard o’ her myself—I’m afeard it’ll make you sick, Miss, a standin’ here in the drizzle like this, an’ with nothin’ to keep off the wet,”—trying to appear as if he had settled the trouble, but all the time keeping his face turned carefully from her.

In the first instant of relief Hannah had let go of his arm and put her hands to her head without one word, so intense had been the strain; then, looking up suddenly, and drawing a quick breath, she faced round to him.

“Stephen, is this the truth that you have told me? You are not deceiving me? Is there nothing the matter?”

“Lord, no, Miss, it beant no lie,” but the old sailor hesitated painfully while she looked at him, worked his hands nervously about his neck, put them irresolutely to his pockets once or twice, till unable to stand it any longer, he suddenly made an end to his indecision by jerking out a letter, at the same time muttering some half-coherent sentence about how it had been given to him for her on board the Nereid.

“O, a letter!” she cried, joyfully, breaking the seal, while her face that had been so clouded lighted up radiantly.

As she looked up for a second, with a smile upon her lips, the old sailor became more distressed in his manner than ever; and when she unfolded the paper he even put out his hand once or twice, as if he would have taken it back. Evidently he could not bear to see her read it then; he had not thought she would open it there. Troubled, he looked about, shuffling again with that uneasy movement on his feet. If only he could find some means to prevail upon her first to take it home, and driven to desperation he turned once more to her, and said in an appealing voice,—

“I’m feared thar be a bad storm comin’ up, Miss; the sea it really do look ugly, and may hap you’d better run home first; thar beant much time to lose noways.”

But alas! it was too late. Hannah, utterly oblivious to the old man’s entreaty, was already eagerly reading down the sheet. Suddenly the color fled from her face. She appeared dazed and confused. For an instant she held the paper in a convulsive grasp, staring at it with a stony glare. Then she uttered a long, shivering sound, and her fingers gradually relaxed their hold.

In a second the letter was gone. A savage wind broke loose with a tiger roar from the sea. The billows, in swift rage and with frightful tumult, piled up their fierce scrolls in a chaos of towering surge. Mist and spray and foam whirled in a blinding froth to the sky.

Old Steve, half-carrying, half-dragging—for the girl seemed hardly able to take a step unassisted—drew Hannah back into the one long low building by the wharf, where most of the people that were standing about a few moments before had taken shelter from the storm. Quickly half a dozen rough hands drew out a small packing-box and placed it for a seat, and some one threw a woolen shawl around her shoulders.

She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with the terror of their strength.

And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea!

It was horrible. The awful words rang constantly in her ears. They repeated themselves over and over. Where, how—she knew naught, only the one sentence, with its dreadful import. After that she had read nothing, and before it she forgot all. Rocking a little back and forth on her seat, she sat there pale and dumb. Like her mother, two-and-twenty years in the past, she asked no sympathy, she heeded no comment.

The ashen clouds, racing before the wind like the scud of the sea, drove swiftly down behind the hills, and the blinding fury of the storm had spent itself. Drearily the gray sky let down again its endless drizzle, when Stephen, his honest voice painfully choked by emotion, prevailed upon her to go home. At first looking at him blankly, she seemed hardly to comprehend what he said, and it was only when he spoke of her mother that she gave any heed to his entreaty. Her mother! how could she tell her the terrible news, her patient, waiting mother! Old Stephen, many times after, used to say how in that moment, when she looked at him, he wished he had been dead before ever he brought her such a letter.

Shivering, always shivering, she drew the shawl tight about her shoulders, and slipped down off the fishy box without a word. The old sailor in his anxious care would have followed too, but she only shook her head, and without having opened her lips, he saw her go alone.

The sullen mist hung its reeking folds along the shore, and the tide, running out, left a wide dank stretch of yellow slime. Above it, where, in Summer, the green swords of the sea-wrack grew, the storm had washed up clammy masses, heavy with ooze, of the pale and sticky tangle. Fiercely the treacherous waters had swept over the shore and covered it with their bitter dregs; but more fiercely had they surged, a dreary desolation, over the girl’s young heart.

Upon the bloated girdles, on the wet sand, in the chilly damp, with the salt spray clinging to her clothes, she went, and the wild sea, calming down, mourned again at her feet, like a sinister mockery of grief, in loud lamentation. When she went up the narrow foot-path on the hill, and came to the garden gate, she stopped a moment, she hardly knew why. It was a mechanical action with her. She scarcely felt or thought. Her heart was heavy as a stone.

The branches of the great honeysuckle were black and bare. She looked at the old rock by the path now slippery with rain. She looked at the tall and prickly cedar drenched with mist and spray. She looked out at the storm-beaten sea, then she looked back once more at the dripping evergreen. The dove in its thorny spire was gone—the dove with the purple ripples on its neck. It had never built another nest. Shivering, shivering, she went on, crossed the porch, where the arms of the bloomless rose, weird and gaunt, flung down great heavy tears at her feet, and, still shivering, she went into the house and shut the door.

Miriam, used to the tumult of the sea, sat patiently in the chair by the window, as she had done so many, many times in the past. When Hannah came in she looked up with surprise. The girl would have avoided her, but Miriam, seeing her so wet became alarmed, and, rising from her seat, had met Hannah in the hall before she could escape.

“I thought you were up stairs! What took you out in such stormy weather? You’re all wet and shivering with the cold, and—why, child, your face is as white as a sheet! What is the matter?”

“Nothing, I—I—was caught in the rain, and—and got a little damp.” The words came uncertainly in a deep voice, for Hannah could hardly trust herself to speak, lest some unguarded tone should abruptly betray the terrible truth. The girl felt as if it was written all over her, or that she might disclose it in every movement; but she had turned her back to her mother, and with trembling hands was hurriedly shaking out the wet shawl. “I’ll go and change my clothes. It will not hurt me.”

“Well, do it quickly, and come down to the fire right away. I’m afraid it will make you cough.”

Hannah, eager to escape, gathered the shawl on her arm; but at the foot of the stairs she stopped and looked back.

“You—you’ve had a nice sleep, mother?”

“Yes, dear, so very sound that I only heard the wind like a gentle zephyr.”

“And you feel well?”

“Oh yes, better to-day than I have for a long, long time. I’m going to get stronger now steadily,” she said, with a smile that, for a moment, brought into the wan face a strange beauty, like a gleam of the same radiance that so far in the past poor Jacob had placed upon the shrine of his heart.

Hannah, turning her head quickly, almost overpowered by sudden faintness, went up stairs, staggered across the room, and sank down by the window in a silent agony of grief. She did not sob or cry audibly, her whole being was one mental wail of despair—her mother! her gentle, waiting mother! Fierce unspoken rebellion had taken possession of the girl’s soul. To one that had been always as a ministering spirit to those about her, why had Providence allotted so cruel a destiny? She, whose life had been but a long heart-struggle; she, that had done no evil, that had suffered without a murmur; she, feeble and bent with years, marked with the silver brand of sorrow and age; she, far down the avenue of her days, almost where the mighty mists of eternity close up their impenetrable curtains, she must yet be compelled to go on, to the last, through the darkness of new trouble! Was there no mercy, no justice?

Bitterly Hannah looked out, dry-eyed, at the relentless sea. There was no distant line against the sky; above, below, drear and empty, the gray stretched to infinity—not a sail on all the waters, and the tides were out—aye, the tides were out for her.

She had never shed a tear. Forgetful of her wet clothing, she leaned a long time upon the window-sill, motionless, and the lines in her young face were hard and strained. Perhaps the memory of that night came back to her with its vision of the royal planet that had seemed a star of promise—a star of promise? A mockery it had been, a cruel mockery!

Then Miriam’s voice calling from the foot of the stairs roused her, and hurriedly she changed her damp dress, but she could not yet meet her mother. She lingered about the room. She fell upon her knees; she tried to pray, but her heart refused to utter a single petition, and Miriam had called again and yet again before Hannah went down.

“Come close to the fire. You were so long I am afraid it will make you sick.”

“No, mother, I am cold a little, that is all.”

Miriam did not ask again what had taken her out, and Hannah, shading her eyes with her hand, sat by the grate trying to prepare herself for the dreadful duty that awaited her. She knew her mother must be told, lest it should come upon her abruptly from the lips of a stranger with a shock greater than she could bear. It was a hard struggle for Hannah; the girl would gladly have borne all the trouble herself, but that could not be.

Just how she said it she never remembered, only suddenly she felt calm and strong for the duty, and with a strange desperation on her face, slowly, gently as human means could do, she told the terrible news.

And Miriam?

Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes.

“Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing.

“Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!”

She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation, was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood.

Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the awful beating of her heart.

“No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never come—home—”

The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,—

“Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring, he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me. I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?”

“No, no——”

“And I shall be stronger then, and we must make the house pleasant for him. It will never be lonely any more when he is here. Why do you cry so, Hannah? It is not long to wait for him now.”

Hannah, trying to smother her choking sobs, slipped down on the floor with her face covered, and Miriam talked on and on of the happy times they would have when “Tommy” came back in the Spring.

She could be made to comprehend nothing of the dreadful tidings. He had promised her he would come back, and her faith never faltered. But there was a distinct change in her from that day. The quiet, reserved manner that had been with her always a marked characteristic, seldom volunteering a sentence to a stranger, was gone. She talked incessantly of her son. She would tell every person she met how much stronger she was getting, and how she meant to go and meet him at the wharf when the Nereid came in.

So months went by, and Miriam did get stronger every day. She had not been so well in years, not since long ago when poor Tom had first taken to following the sea. Bright and happy she seemed from morning till night, only Hannah noticed that sometimes when speaking most earnestly she would stop suddenly for a moment, and look at her in a bewildered way, with that same wavering light flickering up in her eyes.

All the villagers knew the sorrowful story of the Widow Aber’s waiting so trustfully for “Tommy,” her sailor son that could never come back, and they were good to Hannah that Winter. The girl had not cast her bread upon the waters in vain. When she found herself weak and faint a dozen hands were ready with some kind office, and there was little left for her to do about the house. Those bitter months as they waxed and waned were one long, mute agony, but the girl did not break down under the terrible strain. Trouble does not kill the young; thin and pale she grew, but strong in her youth, stronger in her love, for Miriam’s sake, and with something of Miriam’s early nature, she kept her grief crushed within her heart. She seldom went out of the house now. She staid always with her mother, as if fearful to leave her for an hour; and those who went to the house from the village, told how dreadful it was to see her sitting quietly, even sometimes forcing a smile to her trembling lips when the widow would say,—

“Do not look so sad, Hannah. I am strong and well, are you not glad? He said he liked to see me smile, and he must find us bright and cheerful when he comes in the Spring.”

The Spring! Hannah hardly dared to think what might happen then. Every day, as she watched her mother, the dread upon her grew stronger. She would have held back the coming of the Nereid, the beautiful Nereid, that now, with its white wings, might return only as the angel of death to Miriam. She would understand it all then, and the shock, the dreadful shock! It was the terror of this that haunted Hannah day and night.

The last winter month had gone by, and the chilly winds of March were whistling along the coast, when, one morning, old Steve came hurriedly up the hill to the house. He brought the news that Hannah had so long dreaded. The Nereid was even then heading round the cliff. She had asked him to let her know in time, that she might keep it from her mother, at least till after the boat had landed. But while he was in the very act of telling, he stopped suddenly, and a look of fright came over his face. Hannah turned to find the cause, and saw her mother standing in the open doorway. She had overheard it all. The girl’s heart sank in her breast like a stone.

Vainly she endeavored to dissuade her from going to the wharf, but Miriam, radiant as a child in her joy, nervous in her pitiful haste, paid no heed to her remonstrances, that it was cold, that it was too far, that she would go in her place, until Hannah, driven to desperation, told her mother again of the dreadful disaster, and how poor Tom could not be there to meet her. Then the widow stayed her trembling hands for a moment in their flurried effort to tie her bonnet, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, as she had done before, with the same strange gaze in her eyes. It always seemed as if she was dimly conscious, for the instant, that something was wrong, but even as the shadow flitted over her face, it was gone.

“Come,” she said, her countenance all brilliant with eager excitement, “hurry, we must not be late. I feel young and strong, and it will be such a glad surprise for him!”

Hannah, powerless to keep Miriam back, gave up the endeavor, and went on, with a mortal agony in her heart, beside the frail woman who, in all faith, was going to welcome home her son—her son out upon the silent sea of eternity, where even a mother’s voice could never reach. No wonder the girl’s grief made her dumb. Was there no escape? She heard the waters running in, it seemed to her for a thousand leagues, sounding their dreadful dirge. At that moment gladly would she have lain down forever in the same boundless grave with father and brother, where the waves, slow and sad, were playing for them this requiem on every shore of every land. But Miriam, in the extremity of her haste, never stopping, went on steadily over the wet ground, bending, sometimes almost staggering, before the raw March wind that swept in fierce gusts from the still frozen north.

A sudden hush fell upon all the people at the wharf as they came down. With her gray hair blown about in strands, her eyes fever-bright, and her breath coming quick and short, paying no heed to any one, the widow Aber glided silently among them, like an apparition. Unconscious of every thing but the ship, even then in the mouth of the harbor, she stood, her face so thin and worn, all quivering with excitement, and her pale lips moving constantly with some inarticulate sound. Once or twice she stretched out her trembling hands toward the vessel, then, gathering her shawl, held them tight against her breast, as if she would keep down the throbbing of her heart. Frail and shadowy, she seemed hardly human, as she waited, with her garments fluttering in the bitter wind, with her very soul reaching, struggling, looking out eagerly in her gray eyes.

Slowly the ship sailed up the harbor, slowly it reached the dock, and after almost two years’ wandering, the Nereid rested once more in her native waters. As the boat touched the wharf, Hannah had taken her mother’s arm, perhaps that she might hold her back, but Miriam made no effort to move. The girl could feel her trembling, trembling, but she only put up her hand unsteadily and brushed the hair away from her face.

Too well Hannah knew poor Tom would not be there, and, as through a mist, she saw the sailors swing themselves down. In the dreadful trouble that had come upon her, she had almost forgotten Luke. During all these weeks of anguish she had thought only of her mother, but this morning the strain had been too severe. She had given up the battle, and now waited stonily; she would have waited on all day, when Miriam, suddenly breaking loose from her, in a voice half stifled by a wild delight, cried,—

“O, Tommy, my boy, my only boy!”

It was Luke that stood beside her, whom she had strangely mistaken for her son. She would have fallen to the ground had he not caught her in his arms. Unable to speak for a moment, she clung to him trembling violently. Clasping her hands tight about his neck, she closed her eyes, and, with a quivering sigh, laid her head against his shoulder. Hannah, looking at Luke quickly, made a gesture that kept him silent, then Miriam, without moving, said, brokenly,—

“I have waited for you, Tommy. It was such a long, long time, but I knew you would come—”

She paused, while a slight struggle in her breath escaped, like a sob, from her lips, then went on once more still in an unsteady tone,—

“I am so glad, so glad! I am well and strong, Tommy. I feel a little tired now, but I am well and strong. You will never leave me, never leave me any more—”

There was another feeble struggle in her throat; then when she spoke again, her voice, growing fainter at every effort, seemed to come from some far-off distance, drifting in to them as from the desert spaces of an illimitable sea.

“Do not let me go. It is cold, and the wind—Hark! Listen, oh listen how sweet and soft the waters wash! Hold me close, Tommy. I am weary. Why, it is Summer! Look! see the land, the foreign land! Stay, Tommy, I am tired—so tired—”

Her head had drooped back heavily on the man’s arm, but her lips still moved, and suddenly her face lighted up with a radiant smile.

“Nearer,—come nearer—How bright the sunlight shines upon your face! Tommy, my boy—my sailor boy—”

So, on that bleak March morning when the Nereid came in, Miriam had indeed gone to meet her son, her sailor son, on that far, far off foreign shore that is girdled by the mightier ocean of eternity.

REINHART, THE GERMAN.

Poor Reinhart! He certainly was a brilliant fellow. Even the German Professors overlooked his English origin, and felt proud of him. Probably they argued that if he was born in Yorkshire, it was not his fault. And, besides, as the name showed, his family, no matter where they had since strayed, must have been, at some period of the past, true children of the Fatherland.

As far as he was concerned, he seemed to have very little attachment for his native country. Indeed, he never evinced very much of an attachment for any place or any body. We had been together the greater part of ten years. He possessed a singular influence over me. I hardly know what I would not have done for Reinhart. But he was in disposition not the least demonstrative; and whether he ever saw any attraction in me, I can not tell. I simply imagined so, because time wore away without drifting us apart.

A profound interest in metaphysics absorbed his whole being; and through this channel he had crept into the good graces of the college authorities. During his long study upon this subject, he had woven about himself all the labyrinthine meshes of the subtile German philosophy. Though only a tutor of twenty-five, the doctors of metaphysics touched their hats to him; all the students bowed before him; and I—I felt sorry for him.

Why? I can hardly tell. But he had grown thin and pale and nervous within the last year; and I could not help wishing that all Germany was as ignorant of psychology as in the days when the Suabians danced their dryad dances upon the very spot where now the great University lifted up its towers—this great University whose walls were built not of stone from the quarry, but of the labors of many lives, some of whose proudest pinnacles, reaching into a light of dazzling splendor, had been reared only by the everlasting sacrifice of reason.

A vague idea had floated into my mind, but so very terrible it was that I had never dared acknowledge its existence even to myself; nevertheless, it oppressed me constantly. Finally, it grew into such a burden that I could bear it no longer, and so made up my mind to do what little I could to relieve myself at any rate. A plan occurred to me whereby I might accomplish my chief design, which was to draw him away from this study that was consuming him; to draw him away from his myriad theories into life. But before I had said a word, while I was still meditating how it could best be done, Reinhart settled the trouble himself.

I never was more astonished or more pleased than when he proposed the very thing I had been trying to broach, that the two of us should spend the next six months in traveling. What had suggested it to him, or what his reasons were, I never asked. Had he any suspicions of this strange fancy that I would not admit to myself, and yet had been vainly striving to drive from my mind? Since then I have sometimes thought so, and sometimes thought not. To the proposition I consented eagerly, and did my best in hastening all the arrangements; therefore no time was lost before we found ourselves en route for the south of Europe.

As I have said, Reinhart was not in the least demonstrative. Very likely his natural reserve had been greatly increased by his sedentary life. But I noticed, early in our trip, that he seemed laboring to throw off his abstracted manner. I felt encouraged, notwithstanding I knew it was an effort to him, and determined, not only that he should see something of the world, but, what would be of much more benefit, that he should see something of society.

In the beautiful Italian scenery my own spirits rose perceptibly. The great load which had been burdening me lessened and finally raised itself altogether, as I saw this shadow of the German University that had been resting on my companion break. But I know now I was mistaken. It was only the battalion preparing for action; the marshalling of the forces before the conflict.

It had been almost a month since we left Germany. Many of the English and American gentlemen residing in Florence had shown us not only attention but hospitality. One thing I noticed quickly that Reinhart cared almost nothing for the society of ladies. He endured it; never sought it. The most beautiful faces he would pass without any notice, or with merely an indifferent glance. I was sorry for this, because here was a channel, I had thought, wherein might be turned the current of his existence.

With this subject still uppermost in my mind, I determined one morning I would bring my sounding-line into play, if it were only on account of my own satisfaction. We were sitting upon the deep sill of the open window, smoking our cigars and enjoying the utter tranquillity of the southern day, when I asked, indifferently, as if the question had been wholly unpremeditated,—

“Reinhart, were you ever in love?”

He looked up quickly, waited a moment, as though at first he had not exactly understood, then answered,—

“No.”

Now, I knew very well he never had been; for, as I have said, the last ten years we had spent together; but at present I was bent upon the intent of discovering what probability there was that such a catastrophe could ever be brought about; so I said again,—

“Reinhart, do you think you ever will be in love?”

I expected a repetition of my former answer, but, to my surprise, without any hesitation, he replied,—

“Yes.”

“Indeed!” I gasped, with my breath almost gone,—“and when may it come to pass?”

Looking up, I dropped the tone of raillery I had been using immediately, for I saw it was a serious matter to him; and overcome by astonishment, I subsided into complete silence.

The perfume of roses came in on the breeze, and a scarlet-cloaked flower-girl carrying her wares, the only person on the street, turned out of sight. A small bird, with red plumes in its wings, lighted nearly within reach, upon the tree, and broke into song, but, checking the strain almost in the first note, it flew away, settling, a mere speck, upon the northern spire of the Cathedral. Then Reinhart said, as though there had been no pause in the conversation,—

“I do not know; it may never come in this life.”

I looked at him, thoroughly puzzled, almost frightened. Then, thinking perhaps I had not heard aright, said,—“What?” But, without heeding my interrogation, he continued,—