ness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust,
under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that
great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.

"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick
with half a sigh.

"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of
merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and
full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter
to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady
plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)

Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can
have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too,
how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a
parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with
the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adele.

There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a
single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her
leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few
days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather,
which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the
eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is
beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity
for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift,
and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow.
The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey
shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy
westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the
yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more
steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night
conceal all around them.

"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain,
addressing the mate.

"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island,
we 're in a bad course, sir."

"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the
chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."

"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who
stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied,
and answered nothing.

A little after, a voice