stacked on the grass, at hand, and the men off
post were loitering near. These were the usual military signs of the
presence of officers of rank, and may, in sooth, be taken as clues to
the actual state of things, on and around the Head.

Admiral Bluewater lay in the cottage, while Sir Gervaise Oakes occupied
the tent. The former had been transferred to the place where he was
about to breathe his last, at his own urgent request, while his friend
had refused to be separated from him, so long as life remained. The two
flags were still flying at the mast-heads of the Caesar, a sort of
melancholy memorial of the tie that had so long bound their gallant
owners in the strong sympathies of an enduring personal and professional
friendship.

Persons of the education of Mrs. Dutton and her daughter, had not dwelt
so long on that beautiful head-land, without leaving on the spot some
lasting impressions of their tastes. Of the cottage, we have already
spoken. The little garden, too, then bright with flowers, had a grace
and refinement about it that we would hardly have expected to meet in
such a place; and even the paths that led athwart the verdant common
which spread over so much of the upland, had been directed with an eye
to the picturesque and agreeable. One of these paths, too, led to a
rustic summer-house--a sort of small, rude pavilion, constructed, like
the fences, of fragments of wrecks, and placed on a shelf of the cliff,
at a dizzy elevation, but in perfect security. So far from there being
any danger in entering this summer-house, indeed, Wycherly, during his
six months' residence near the Head, had made a path that descended
still lower to a point that was utterly concealed from all eyes above,
and had actually planted a seat on another shelf with so much security,
that both Mildred and her mother often visited it in company. During the
young man's recent absence, the poor girl, indeed, had passed much of
her time there, weeping and suffering in solitude. To this seat, Dutton
never ventured; the descent, though well protected with ropes, requiring
greater steadiness of foot and head than intemperance had left him. Once
or twice, Wycherly had induced Mildred to pass an hour with him alone in
this romantic place, and some of his sweetest recollections of this
just-minded and intelligent girl, were connected with the frank
communications that had there occurred between them. On this bench he
was seated at the time of th