immediately she was made straight, and glorified God."

"Ay, honey, I see that all as if it was me. And I think, as I'm setting
here, What if the latch should lift, and the gracious stranger should
come in, His gown a-sweepin' behind Him and a-sweet'nin' the air, and He
should look down on me with His heavenly eyes, and He should smile, and
lay His hands on my head, warm?--and I say to myself, 'Lord, I am not
worthy,'--and He says, 'Miss Catharine, thou art loosed from thine
infirmity!' And the latch lifts, as I think, and I wait,--but it's not
Him."

Well, when I went out of that place I wasn't the same girl that had
gone in. My will gave way; I came home and took up my burden and was in
peace. Still I couldn't help my thoughts,--and they ran perpetually to
the sea. I hadn't need to go up on the house-tops, for I didn't shut my
eyes but there it stretched before me. I stirred about the rooms and
tried to make them glad once more; but I was thin and blanched as if I'd
been rising from a fever. Father said it was the salt air I wanted; and
one day he was going out for frost-fish, and he took me with him, and
left me and my basket on the sands while he was away. It was this side
of the South Breaker that he put me out, but I walked there; and where
the surf was breaking in the light, I went and sat down and looked over
it. I could do that now.

There was the Cape sparkling miles and miles across the way, unconcerned
that he whose firm foot had rung last on its flints should ring there no
more; there was the beautiful town lying large and warm along the river;
here gay craft went darting about like gulls, and there up the channel
sped a larger one, with all her canvas flashing in the sun, and
shivering a little spritsail in the shadow, as she went; and fawning in
upon my feet came the foam from the South Breaker, that still perhaps
cradled Faith and Gabriel. But as I looked, my eye fell, and there came
the sea-scenes again,--other scenes than this, coves and corners of
other coasts, sky-girt regions of other waters. The air was soft, that
April day, and I thought of the summer calms; and with that rose long
sheets of stillness, far out from any strand, purple beneath the noon;
fields slipping close in-shore, emerald-backed and scaled with sunshine;
long sleepy swells that hid the light in their hollows, and came
creaming along the cliffs. And if upon these broke suddenly a wild
glimpse of some storm careering over a mer