t of the fourth; then a deadly pallor overspread
his features.

Our story was soon told. A solemn silence fell upon the crowd of rough
boatmen gathered round, interrupted only by a stifled sob form one poor
old man who stood apart from the rest.

The sea was still running too high for any small boat to venture out; so
it was arranged that the wherry should take us back to town, leaving the
yawl, with a picked crew, to hug the island until daybreak, and then set
forth in search of the Dolphin.

Though it was barely sunrise when we reached town, there were a great
many persons assembled at the landing eager for intelligence from
missing boats. Two picnic parties had started down river the day before,
just previous to the gale, and nothing had been heard of them. It turned
out that the pleasure-seekers saw their danger in time, and ran ashore
on one of the least exposed islands, where they passed the night.
Shortly after our own arrival they appeared off Rivermouth, much to the
joy of their friends, in two shattered, dismasted boats.

The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and mentally.
Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and sent Kitty
Collins for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and fancied myself
still on Sandpeep Island: now we were building our brick stove to cook
the chowder, and, in my delirium, I laughed aloud and shouted to my
comrades; now the sky darkened, and the squall struck the island; now I
gave orders to Wallace how to manage the boat, and now I cried because
the rain was pouring in on me through the holes in the tent. Towards
evening a high fever set in, and it was many days before my grandfather
deemed it prudent to tell me that the Dolphin had been found, floating
keel upwards, four miles southeast of Mackerel Reef.

Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to
school again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy the
playground was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive face! One
day a folded sheet slipped from my algebra: it was the last note he ever
wrote me. I could not read it for the tears.

What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered through
the town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point--the place
where we bathed! We bathed there no more! How well I remember the
funeral, and what a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar
name on a small headstone in the Old South Bur