hing besides."

But though Dame Briton heard, she passed this last bit of information
without remark.

"Idling down there on the beach to see the boys off fishing!" she could
not help saying. "You needn't be up afore the break o' day for work like
that."

"It was Luke Merlyn."

"No matter."

"I showed him what I had found. Ask him if I'm ever too free. He'd know
as quick as anybody,--and care as much."

Clarice, while speaking this, had departed yet farther both in look and
voice from her usual serenity.

The dame let her last words pass without taking them up. She was by this
time curious.

"What did you find?" asked she.

Clarice showed the basket and the gold chain. Her mother handled both
with wondering admiration, asking many a question. At last she threw the
chain around her neck.

"It's gold," said she. "It's worth much. If you could pick up the like
of that every day, you might let the old weed-basket drift."

"I had rather gather weeds till my back was broken doing it, than ever
find another," said Clarice.

The dame took this for a child's exaggeration; observing which, Clarice
said, sadly,--

"Why, don't you see how it came to shore? There's been a wreck in the
storm last week. Oh, may-be I've found all that will tell of it!"

"What's that in your hand?" asked the dame, who spied the ring.

Clarice half opened her palm; she did not like to let the ring pass from
her keeping, and all this while she had stood doubting whether or not
she should show it to her mother.

Dame Briton took it quickly. The dull glitter of greedy eyes fell on the
mild lustre of the pearl, but found no reflection.

"A ring!" said she, and she tried to fit it to her little finger. It
would not pass the first rough joint.

"Try it," said she to Clarice.

"No," was the quiet answer. "But I will keep the ring. It must have been
a lady's. May-be it was a token."

"May-be it was.--If your father should take that chain to the Port,
he might make a handsome bargain,--if he was worth a snap at
bargains.--Here's something; what be these marks? look here, Clarice."

The face of the girl flushed a little as she answered,--"_H. H_."

"_H.H.!_ What does that mean? I wonder."

"May-be the name of the owner," answered Clarice, timidly.

She was thinking, not of what the letters might have meant to others,
but of what they had come to signify to her and Luke.

"Who knows?" answered her mother; and she stood musing and ab