y her kindness, I
took food more readily from her hand than any other, these little
attentions became at last habitual. As my manners grew calmer and I
settled into a melancholy which, though equally deep, was less fearful
than the feverish torment under which I had laboured, she became
reserved, and when I began to appear somewhat like my fellow-men, went
regularly to the table, and, instead of pacing the deck all night, spent
a part of it quietly in my state-room, Lucy absented herself wholly from
that part of the vessel where I passed the greater portion of the day,
and I seldom exchanged a word with her, unless I purposely sought her
society.

"The stormy weather drove me to the cabin, where she usually sat on the
transom reading or watching the troubled waves; and, as the voyage was
long, we were thrown much in each other's way, especially as Captain
Grey, who had invited me to ship with him, and who seemed to take an
interest in my welfare, good-naturedly encouraged an intercourse by
which he probably hoped I might be won from a state of melancholy that
seemed to grieve the jolly ship-master almost as much as it did his
kind-hearted, sensitive child.

"Lucy's shyness, therefore, wore gradually away, and before our tedious
passage was completed I ceased to be a restraint upon her. She talked
freely with me; for while I maintained a rigid silence concerning my own
past experiences, of which I could scarcely endure to think, she exerted
herself freely for my entertainment, and related with simple frankness
almost every circumstance of her past life. Sometimes I listened
attentively; sometimes, absorbed in my own painful reflections, I would
be deaf to her voice and forgetful of her presence. Then I often
observed that she had suddenly ceased speaking, and, starting from my
reverie and looking quickly up, would find her eyes fixed upon me so
reproachfully that, rallying my self-command, I would try to appear, and
sometimes became, seriously interested in the artless narratives of my
little entertainer. She told me that until she was fourteen years old
she lived with her mother in a little cottage on Cape Cod, their home
being only occasionally enlivened by the return of her father from his
long absences at sea. They would visit the city where his vessel lay,
pass a few weeks in great enjoyment, and then return to mourn the
departure of the cheerful sea-captain, and patiently count the weeks and
months until his retu