nds;
she cast both bowl and sponge into the sea.

"'Mr. Axtell,' she said; 'there's a power in the world greater than your
own. The sooner you yield, the less you'll feel the thorns. Your mother,
on the shore, is suffering agonies for you. Will you come into this
boat, now?'

"The boats had floated around a little, and had changed places. I looked
into her eyes; there was nothing there that said, 'I'm trying to conquer
you.' There was something in them that I had never seen made visible on
earth before,--something radiant, with a might of right, that made me
yield. She saw that I was coming. I lifted my feet out of the inches of
water that had nearly filled it, put my oars across her tiny boat, and,
leaving my own River-Ribbon to its fate, I entered that wherein my
preserver had come out. I took the oars from her passive hands; she went
to the front of the boat and left me master of the small ship. I turned
its prow homeward. My preserver sat motionless, her eyes in the moon,
for aught of notice she took of me. I was going toward the river; she
bade me keep to the bay-shore, at the right. I obeyed. No more words
were spoken until we were almost to land. I saw a little bulb afloat.
The boat went near. I put out my oar and drew it in. It was the
althea-bud that I had offered to the sea-nymphs.

"'The mermaids refuse my offering,' I said; 'will you accept it?'--and
I handed it, dripping with salt-water, to the fairy who sat so silently
before me.

"She took it, pointed to a little sheltered cove between two outstanding
ledges of rock, and said,--

"'This is boatie's home,--see if you can guide her safely in.'

"The keel grated on the gravelly beach, the boat struck home. The young
girl did not wait for me, she landed first, and, handing me a tiny key,
said,--

"'Draw my boat up out of reach of the tide, make it fast, please,'--and
she sped away into the dreamy darkness of the land, whose shadows the
moon did not yet reach, leaving me alone on the shore.

"I obeyed her orders implicitly, and then followed. It was not far from
this sheltered cove that I met those with whom I had come. My mother was
sitting upon one of the sea-shore rocks, passive, but stony. The young
girl had just been speaking to her, she must have been saying that 'I
was come back,' but my mother had not heeded. It was only in sight that
her reason came, but, oh! such a deluge of gladness came to her when she
saw me!

"'I was dying,' she said;