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arrive. Neale Ashburton worked with the bravest of them. How they watched and listened, how they prayed and cried , I cannot stop to tell. To perish there, so near to safety! Cecil was very calm, Ashburton's smile had inspired her with a sense of security. Now she had the fullest faith in him. The storm lulled a little, and the vessel no longer pitched with every sea, but that horrible creaking sound, as if she suffered from the cruel wound the rocks had made, still filled their ears. Mrs. Gage was quiet too, now ; but it was only outwardly. She was thinking what a fool she had been, to place her life in jeopardy when it stretched out so fair before her. She had wealth, station , youth, and beauty—what madness to peril it all! She would not give five years of her life for twenty Ashburtons ; and yet it was for his sake she had come. She almost hated him now. Would the morning never dawn ! In this darkness a signal of distress would be of no avail. And how far were they from land ? After what appeared an age, the clouds in the east took a gray tinge, and presently, through the lowering air, that seemed all sea or sky, Capt. Brown descried a strip of shore. They had decided , that as soon as daylight made it practicable, they would fill the small boat with the women, and row ashore, if no other assistance came ; so the plan was put into execution. { The sea had become comparatively smooth, and the distance was not great . They all crowded in, Mrs. Gage taking the lead ; and then they went skimming over the waves, exultant with a sense of safety. Something soft brushed past Ashburton-a woman's dress ! He turned and caught both her hands. "Good heavens !" he exclaimed ; and then his own trembled with the fiercest throe his manhood's passion had ever given him. " Why did you not go ? It's worse than Capt. Brown confessed, for we are filling fast." There was not room for all ; my life is of
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less value than that of happy women. " Cecil Durant's voice was low and trembled a little. "You are brave, " he said ; "and yet it is just what I should expect from you. Was there nothing else ?" Through all the morning's gloom his eyes found hers. She felt that they were looking into her soul. "Cecil!" The first time he had ever called her by that name. " There is something else. I wanted to come back to you. I wanted to tell you, if it is not too late- " and her voice failed her. "It is not too late !" softly and reassuringly ; and drawing her nearer to him, until his subtle magnetism seemed to infuse new strength into her throbbing pulses. "That I love you, " she went on to say. ..I would rather remain here and perish with you, than take my life on any other terms." "We shall not perish ; somewhere we shall come to anchor. Cecil, I have been adrift since that night. " They waited in the silence of the gray morning until help arrived. The storm had died away, but the sun was still veiled behind the sullen clouds. What did it matter to Cecil, since the brighter sky of love shone upon her! "There wasn't any real danger, " Neale Ashburton said, with his gay laugh, as they were taking dinner at a fisherman's cottage. " The Firefly is safe enough there, wedged between two rocks, and if we had only known, we might have taken it calmly. But I don't believe we can wait for repairs-so our voyage has ended." Mrs. Gage looked sharply at him. There was a light in his eyes that she had never seen before. Had Cecil Durant's remaining behind anything to do with it ? Sometime in the autumn her doubts were settled by a marriage. Cecil Ashburton makes a very compliant wife. She has learned the true strength and power of a man's soul.
THE
STREAM .
BY CATHARINE ALLAN. BESIDE the stream we wandered, When leaves were green in June, And birds sang out of Heaven, And waters flowed in tune. But now the snow is lying On slope, and bank, and stream, And all that happy Summer Has vanished like a dream .
Beside the stream we wandered, You sketched the mossy mill ; The gnarled old trees about it, The pathway to the hill. The mem'ry floats before me Like some delicious strain; Oh! Winter maybe dreary, But Summer comes again!
