some deathbed
whose occupant she had composed decently for the last sleep, she used to
wish it were herself lying there on that moveless pillow, and soon to be
sheltered from the cruel light by the bosom of the kindly earth. For now,
as she passed the birches softly rustling in the night wind, and hurried
by, she remembered other times when she had passed them, and had stopped
to listen, cared for, protected, with Andrew's arm about her; and now, as
the clocks, one after another, remotely chimed the hour, the sound smote
her with a familiar sweetness full of pain; and now, as she came along the
sea-wall and saw the dark river glimmering widely and ever the same, while
its mysterious tide flowed to meet the far-off spark of the lighthouse
lantern, she recalled a hundred happy hours when she and Andrew in the
boat together had rocked there in soft summer nights, with sunset melting
in the stream and wrapping them about with rosy twilight; or those when
whispers of the September gales swelled the sail, and the boat flew like a
gull from crest to crest of the bar; or those when misty sea-turns crept
up stream and folded them, and drowned the sparkle of the lighthouse and
the emerald and ruby ray of the channel lights, and left them shut away
from the world, alone with each other on the great gray current silently
sweeping to the sea--times when she knew no fear, trusting in the strong
arm and stout heart beside her, before the river had brought death to her
door; when the whole of life seemed radiant and rich--times that made this
solitary night walk trodden now seem colder and drearier and darker than
the grave--that made her wish it ended in a grave.

And so at length the year slipped by, and spring had come again, and the
sap had leaped up the bough and burst into blossom there, and the blood
had bubbled freshly in the veins of youth, and hope had once more
gladdened all the world but Louie. With her only a dull patience stayed
that tried to call itself content, until she heard it rumored among the
harbor-people that the Sabrina was nearly due again, and with that her
heart beat so turbulently that she had to crush it down again with the
thought that, though Andrew every day drew nearer, came up the happy
climates of southern latitudes and spread his sails on favoring gales for
home, he only hastened to his wedding-day. And one day, at last, she rose
to see a craft anchored in the middle channel down below the piers,
unpa