our sugar, which had kept dry in a sardine-box, and warmed ourselves with frequent doses.

After four or five hours the rain ceased, the wind died away to a moan, and the sea- no longer raging like a maniac sobbed and sobbed with a piteous human voice all along the coast. And well it might, after that night's work. Twelve sail of the Gloucester fishing fleet had gone down with every soul on board, just outside of Whale's-back Light. Think of the wide grief that follows in the wake of one wreck; then think of the despairing women who wrung their hands and wept, the next morning, in the streets of Gloucester, Marblehead, and Newcastle!

Though our strength was nearly spent, we were too cold to sleep. Once I sunk into a troubled doze, when I seemed to hear Charley Marden's parting words, only it was the Sea that said them. After that I threw off the drowsiness whenever it threatened to overcome me.

Fred Langdon was the earliest to discover a filmy, luminous streak in the sky, the first glimmering of sunrise.

"Look, it is nearly daybreak!"

While we were following the direction of his finger, a sound of distant oars fell on our ears.

We listened breathlessly, and as the dip of the blades. became more audible, we discerned two foggy lights, like willo'-the-wisps, floating on the river.

Running down to the water's edge, we hailed the boats with all our might. The call was heard, for the oars rested a moment in the row-locks, and then pulled in towards the island.

It was two boats from the town, in the foremost of which we could now make out the figures of Captain Nutter and Binny Wallace's father. We shrunk back on seeing him.

"Thank God!" cried Mr. Wallace, fervently, as he leaped from the wherry without waiting for the bow to touch the beach.

But when he saw only three boys standing on the sands, his eye wandered restlessly about in quest of the fourth; then a deadly pallor overspread his features.

Our story was soon told. A solemn silence fell upon the crowd of rough boatmen gathered round, interrupted only by a stifled sob from one poor old man, who stood apart from the

rest.

The sea was still running too high for any small boat to venture out; so it was arranged that the wherry should take us

back to town, leaving the yawl, with a picked crew, to hug the island until daybreak, and then set forth in search of the "Dolphin."

Though it was barely sunrise when we reached town, there were a great many people assembled at the landing eager for intelligence from missing boats. Two picnic parties had started down river the day before, just previous to the gale, and nothing had been heard of them. It turned out that the pleasureseekers saw their danger in time, and ran ashore on one of the least exposed islands, where they passed the night. Shortly after our own arrival they appeared off Rivermouth, much to the joy of their friends, in two shattered, dismasted boats.

The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and mentally. Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and sent Kitty Collins for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and fancied myself still on Sandpeep Island; now we were building our brick-stove to cook the chowder, and, in my delirium, I laughed aloud and shouted to my comrades; now the sky darkened, and the squall struck the island; now I gave orders to Wallace how to manage the boat, and now I cried. because the rain was pouring in on me through the holes in the tent. Towards evening a high fever set in, and it was many days before my grandfather deemed it prudent to tell me that the "Dolphin" had been found, floating keel upwards, four miles southeast of Mackerel Reef.

Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to school again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy the playground was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive face! One day a folded sheet slipped from my algebra; it was the last note he ever wrote me. I could n't read it for the tears.

We

What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered through the town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point, the place where we bathed. bathed there no more! How well I remember the funeral, and what a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar name on a small headstone in the Old South Burying Ground!

The

Poor little Binny Wallace! Always the same to me. rest of us have grown up into hard, worldly men, fighting the fight of life; but you are forever young, and gentle, and pure; a part of my own childhood that time cannot wither; always a little boy, always poor little Binny Wallace!

BABY BELL.1

I.

HAVE you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?

The gates of heaven were left ajar:
With folded hands and dreamy eyes,
Wandering out of Paradise,

She saw this planet, like a star,
Hung in the glistening depths of even
Its bridges, running to and fro,

O'er which the white-winged Angels go,
Bearing the holy Dead to heaven.

She touched a bridge of flowers- those feet
So light they did not bend the bells
Of the celestial asphodels,

They fell like dew upon the flowers:
Then all the air grew strangely sweet.
And thus came dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours.

II.

She came and brought delicious May;
The swallows built beneath the eaves;
Like sunlight, in and out the leaves
The robins went, the livelong day;
The lily swung its noiseless bell;
And on the porch the slender vine
Held out its cups of fairy wine.
How tenderly the twilights fell!
Oh, earth was full of singing birds
And opening springtide flowers,
When the dainty Baby Bell
Came to this world of ours.

III.

O Baby, dainty Baby Bell,

How fair she grew from day to day!
What woman nature filled her eyes,
What poetry within them lay-

1 Used by permission of Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.

Those deep and tender twilight eyes,
So full of meaning, pure and bright
As if she yet stood in the light
Of those oped gates of Paradise.
And so we loved her more and more:
Ah, never in our hearts before
Was love so lovely born.

We felt we had a link between
This real world and that unseen
The land beyond the morn;
And for the love of those dear eyes,
For love of her whom God led forth,
(The mother's being ceased on earth
When Baby came from Paradise,) —
For love of Him who smote our lives,
And woke the chords of joy and pain,

We said, Dear Christ! - our hearts bowed down
Like violets after rain.

IV.

And now the orchards, which were white
And pink with blossoms when she came,
Were rich in autumn's mellow prime;
The clustered apples burnt like flame,
The folded chestnut burst its shell,

The grapes hung purpling, range on range:
And time wrought just as rich a change.

In little Baby Bell.

Her lissom form more perfect grew,
And in her features we could trace,
In softened curves, her mother's face.
Her angel nature ripened too:

We thought her lovely when she came,
But she was holy, saintly now.
Around her pale, angelic brow
We saw a slender ring of flame.

V.

God's hand had taken away the seal
That held the portals of her speech;
And oft she said a few strange words
Whose meaning lay beyond our reach.
She never was a child to us,
We never held her being's key;
We could not teach her holy things
Who was Christ's self in purity.

The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Baby Bell.

We shuddered with unlanguaged pain,
And all our hopes were changed to fears,
And all our thoughts ran into tears
Like sunshine into rain.

We cried aloud in our belief,

"Oh, smite us gently, gently, God!
Teach us to bend and kiss the rod,
And perfect grow through grief."
Ah! how we loved her, God can tell;
Her heart was folded deep in ours.
Our hearts are broken, Baby Bell!

White buds, the summer's drifted snow-
Wrapt her from head to foot in flowers .
And thus went dainty Baby Bell

Out of this world of ours.

DESTINY.1

THREE roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down Each with its loveliness as with a crown,

Drooped in a florist's window in a town.

The first a lover bought. It lay at rest,

Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty's breast.

The second rose, as virginal and fair,

Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot's hair.

The third, a widow, with new grief made wild,

Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.

1 Used by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.