no writing to him."

"Oh, dear! that's the worst. Oh, that horrid, horrid sea! It's like
death--you don't know where they are, and you can't hear from them--and a
four years' voyage! Oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"Don't, dear child, don't; you distress me," said Mrs. Pitkin.

"Yes, that's just like me," said Diana, wiping her eyes. "Here I am
thinking only of myself, and you that have had your heart broken are
trying to comfort me, and trying to comfort Cousin Silas. We have both of
us scolded and flouted him away, and now you, who suffer the most of
either of us, spend your breath to comfort us. It's just like you. But,
cousin, I'll try to be good and comfort you. I'll try to be a daughter to
you. You need somebody to think of you, for you never think of yourself.
Let's go in his room," she said, and taking the mother by the hand they
crossed to the empty room. There was his writing-table, there his
forsaken books, his papers, some of his clothes hanging in his closet.
Mrs. Pitkin, opening a drawer, took out a locket hung upon a bit of blue
ribbon, where there were two locks of hair, one of which Diana recognized
as her own, and one of James's. She hastily hung it about her neck and
concealed it in her bosom, laying her hand hard upon it, as if she would
still the beatings of her heart.

"It seems like a death," she said. "Don't you think the ocean is like
death--wide, dark, stormy, unknown? We cannot speak to or hear from them
that are on it."

"But people can and do come back from the sea," said the mother,
soothingly. "I trust, in God's own time, we shall see James back."

"But what if we never should? Oh, cousin! I can't help thinking of that.
There was Michael Davis,--you know--the ship was never heard from."

"Well," said the mother, after a moment's pause and a choking down of
some rising emotion, and turning to a table on which lay a Bible, she
opened and read: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy
right hand shall hold me."

The THEE in this psalm was not to her a name, a shadow, a cipher, to
designate the unknowable--it stood for the inseparable Heart-friend--the
Father seeing in secret, on whose bosom all her tears of sorrow had been
shed, the Comforter and Guide forever dwelling in her soul, and giving
peace where the world gave only trouble.

Diana beheld her face as it had been the face of an angel. She kissed
her, an