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