hich shook the very foundations of the structure,
awoke him. He leaped to his feet, and into an inch of water! By the
flickering firelight he could see it oozing and dripping from the
crevices of the logs and broadening into a pool by the chimney. A
scrap of paper torn from an envelope was floating idly on its current.
Was it the overflow of the backed-up waters of the river? He was not
left long in doubt. Another blow upon the gable of the house, and a
torrent of spray leaped down the chimney, scattered the embers far and
wide, and left him in utter darkness. Some of the spray clung to his
lips. It was salt. The great ocean had beaten down the river bar and
was upon him!

Was there aught to fly to? No! The cabin stood upon the highest point
of the sand spit, and the low swale on one side crossed by his late
visitors was a seething mass of breakers, while the estuary behind him
was now the ocean itself. There was nothing to do but to wait.

The very helplessness of his situation was, to a man of his peculiar
temperament, an element of patient strength. The instinct of
self-preservation was still strong in him, but he had no fear of death,
nor, indeed, any presentiment of it; yet if it came, it was an easy
solution of the problem that had been troubling him, and it wiped off
the slate! He thought of the sarcastic prediction of his cousin, and
death in the form that threatened him was the obliteration of his home
and even the ground upon which it stood. There would be nothing to
record, no stain could come upon the living. The instinct that kept
him true to HER would tell her how he died; if it did not, it was
equally well. And with this simple fatalism his only belief, this
strange man groped his way to his bed, lay down, and in a few moments
was asleep. The storm still roared without. Once again the surges
leaped against the cabin, but it was evident that the wind was abating
with the tide.

When he awoke it was high noon, and the sun was shining brightly. For
some time he lay in a delicious languor, doubting if he was alive or
dead, but feeling through every nerve and fibre an exquisite sense of
peace--a rest he had not known since his boyhood--a relief he scarcely
knew from what. He felt that he was smiling, and yet his pillow was
wet with the tears that glittered still on his lashes. The sand
blocking up his doorway, he leaped lightly from his window. A few
clouds were still sailing slowly in t