after day, week
after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive
edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the
living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never
to return. Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such
emotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendar
or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint's bell pealed
forth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no
chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds those
poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, or
humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid
trance--the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded
it, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least loved
voice she could have heard.

No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship,
and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her
soul, that at length she desperately said, "Not yet, not yet; my foolish
heart runs on too fast." So she forced patience for some further weeks.
But to those whom earth's sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is
still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long
it was since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same precision, how
long a space remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What present
day or month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in which
Hunilla was entirely lost.

And now follows--

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows not
whether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy
to certain things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to
blazon such. If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale
forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those
whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not
books, should be forbid. But in all things man sows upon the wind, which
bloweth just there whither it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know.
Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla--

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden
lizard ere she devour. More terrible, to see how feline Fate will
sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it
repulse a sane despair with a ho