nded on the island.

The dog and the seal were faithful to him; used to lie beside him, and
often whimpered; their minds, accustomed to communicate without the aid
of speech, found out, Heaven knows how! that he was in grief or in
sickness.

These two creatures, perhaps, saved his life or his reason. They came
between his bereaved heart and utter solitude.

Thus passed a month of wretchedness unspeakable.

Then his grief took a less sullen form.

He came back to Paradise Bay, and at sight of it burst into a passion of
weeping.

These were his first tears, and inaugurated a grief more tender than
ever, but less akin to madness and despair.

Now he used to go about and cry her name aloud, passionately, by night
and day.

"Oh, Helen! Helen!"

And next his mind changed in one respect, and he clung to every
reminiscence of her. Every morning he went round her haunts, and kissed
every place where he had seen her put her hand.

Only the cave he could not yet face.

He tried, too. He went to the mouth of it again and again, and looked in;
but go into it and face it, empty of her--he could not.

He prayed often.

One night he saw her in a dream.

She bent a look of angelic pity on him, and said but these words, "Live
in my cave," then vanished.

Alone on an island in the vast Pacific, who can escape superstition? It
fills the air. He took this communication as a command, and the next
night he slept in the cave.

But he entered it in the dark, and left it before dawn.

By degrees, however, he plucked up courage and faced it in daylight. But
it was a sad trial. He came out crying bitterly after a few minutes.

Still he persevered, because her image had bade him; and at last, one
evening, he even lighted the lamp, and sat there looking at the glorious
walls and roof his hapless love had made.

Getting stronger by degrees, he searched about, and found little relics
of her--a glove, a needle, a great hat she had made out of some large
leaves. All these he wept over and cherished.

But one day he found at the very back of the cave a relic that made him
start as if a viper had stung his loving heart. It was a letter.

He knew it in a moment. It had already caused him many a pang; but now it
almost drove him mad. Arthur Wardlaw's letter.

He recoiled from it, and let it lie. He went out of the cave, and cursed
his hard fate. But he came back. It was one of those horrible things a
man abhors, yet cannot keep