some
amends for the noble grandson you have lost! Alas! my dear
father, I do live, but how does it happen? Of what am I
formed that I live, and why? Of what service can I be in
this world, either to you or any one else, with a body
reduced to premature old age, and a mind enfeebled and
bewildered? Yet, since it is my lot to live, I will endeavor
to fulfil my part, and exert myself to my utmost, though
this life must henceforth be to me a bed of thorns.
Whichever way I turn, the same anguish still assails me. You
talk of consolation. Ah! you know not what you have lost. I
think Omnipotence could give me no equivalent for my boy;
no, none,--none."

She could not be comforted. Her health gave way. Her husband thought
that if anything could restore her to tranquillity and health it would
be the society of her father; and so, at the beginning of winter, it
was resolved that she should attempt the dangerous voyage. Her father
sent a medical friend from New York to attend her.

"Mr. Alston," wrote this gentleman,

"seemed rather hurt that you should conceive it necessary to
send a person here, as he or one of his brothers would
attend Mrs. Alston to New York. I told him you had some
opinion of my medical talents; that you had learned your
daughter was in a low state of health, and required unusual
attention, and medical attention on her voyage; that I had
torn myself from my family to perform this service for my
friend."

And again, a few days after:--

"I have engaged a passage to New York for your daughter in a
pilot-boat that has been out privateering, but has come in
here, and is refitting merely to get to New York. My only
fears are that Governor Alston may think the mode of
conveyance too undignified, and object to it; but Mrs.
Alston is fully bent on going. You must not be surprised, to
see her very low, feeble, and emaciated. Her complaint is an
almost incessant nervous fever."

The rest is known. The vessel sailed. Off Cape Hatteras, during a gale
that swept the coast from Maine to Georgia, the pilot-boat went down,
and not one escaped to tell the tale. The vessel was never heard of
more. So perished this noble, gifted, ill-starred lady.

The agonizing scenes that followed may be imagined. Father and husband
were kept long in suspense. Even when many weeks had elapsed