e curse of my life and be happy in spite of it.

When winter shut down, however, I didn't talk quite so much to the
sea; it was ugly and boisterous, and the windy promenade was
dangerous, and I shut myself up and pined like the "Prisoner of
Chillon." I have lots of spunk and pride, if I am bashful; and so I
never let on to those at home--when I sent them a letter once in two
months by the little tug that brought my oil and provisions--that I
was homesick. I said the ocean was glorious; that there was a Byronic
sublimity in lighting up the lantern; that standing behind a counter
and showing dry-goods to silly, giggling girls couldn't be compared
with it; that I hadn't blushed in six months, and that I didn't think
I should ever be willing to come back to a world full of grinning
snobs and confusing women.

And now, what do you think happened to me? My fate was too strong even
for Buncombe Island. It was the second of January. The tug had not
left the island, after leaving a nine-weeks' supply, more than twelve
hours before a fearful gale began to blow; it rose higher and higher
through the night, and in the morning I found that a small
sailing-vessel had been wrecked about half a mile from the
light-house, where the beach ran out for some distance into the water,
and the land was not so high as on the rock. I ran down there, the
wind still roaring enough to blow me away, and the spray dashing into
my eyes, and I found the vessel had gone to pieces and every man was
drowned.

But what was this that lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and
apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and
shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar
difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I
sat and lived. I put her before the fire; I heated some brandy and
poured it between her lips; in short, when I sat down to my little
tea-table late that afternoon, somebody sat on the opposite side--a
woman--a girl, rather, not more than eighteen or nineteen. Here she
was, and here she must remain for two long months.

_She_ did not seem half so much put out as I. In fact, she was quite
calm, after she had explained to me that she was one of three
passengers on board the sailing-vessel, and that all the others were
drowned.

"You will have to remain here for two months," I ventured to explain
to her, coloring like a lobster dabbed into hot water.

"Oh, then, I may as well