ese qualities none
found in her, no more than common sense or good nature, before she went
to those parts; and of the reverse of all which if she had not been
irrecoverably possessed, in an extraordinary and insufferable degree,
after many years' fruitless endeavours to reclaim her, she had never
seen those parts. I long for the particulars of her death, which, you
are pleased to tell me, I am to have by next post."

"Hers was a singular death, at last," observed Lord Carse, when he put
the President's second letter into the hands of his sister. "I almost
wonder that they did not slip the body overboard, rather than expose
themselves to danger for the sake of giving Christian burial to such a
person."

"Dust to dust," said Lady Rachel, thoughtfully. "Those were the words
said over her. I am glad it was so, rather than that one more was added
to the tossing billows. For what was she but a billow, driven by the
winds and tossed?"

When, some few years after, the steward approached the island on an
autumn night, in honour of Rollo's invitation to attend the funeral of
the Widow Fleming, his eye unconsciously sought the guiding light on the
hill-side.

"Ah!" said he, recollecting himself, "it is gone, and we shall see it no
more. Rollo will live on the main, and this side of the island will be
deserted. Her light gone! We should almost as soon thought of losing a
star. And she herself gone! We shall miss her, as if one of our lofty
old rocks had crumbled down into the sea. She was truly, though one
would not have dared to tell her so, an anchorage to people feebler than
herself. She had a faith which made her spirit, tender as it was, as
firm as any rock."

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Billow and the Rock, by Harriet Martineau

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