t to the ship the most urgent entreaties that he might
be allowed to return there before it was night. The sailors, rough and
hard as they generally were to him, sympathized with his agony of fear,
and asked that he might return; but his demon was now inflamed by drink,
and every word in favor of his petition insured its rejection. He even
made the unusual exertion of going up himself in the last boat, that he
might see the victim of his malice, and feast his ears with the cries
and objurgations which terror would wring from him.

"If we should forget you in the morning, you can take the next homeward
bound ship that stops here, but don't tell your friends at the
poor-house too bad a tale of us," were the parting words of this wretch.

Darkness and silence were around the desolate boy, but they brought no
fear with them. Man, his enemy, was not there. He saw not the beauty of
the heavens, from which the stars looked down on him in their unchanged
serenity, or of the earth, where flowers were springing at his feet, and
graceful shrubs were waving over him. He heard not the deep-toned sea
uttering its solemn music, or the breeze whispering its softer notes in
his ear. He only saw the ship, the abode of men, fading into
indistinctness, as the darkness threw its veil over it; he only heard
the voice in his heart, proclaiming ever and again, "I am free." Before
the morrow dawned, he had surmounted the rocks at the landing place, and
wandered on with no aim, but to put as great a distance as possible
between him and the ship. Two hours' walking brought him again to the
sea, in an opposite direction to that by which he had approached the
island. Here he crawled into a hiding-place among the rocks, and lay
down to rest. The day was again declining before he ventured forth from
his covert, and cautiously approached the distant shore, whence he might
see the ship. He reached the spring by which he had stood yester eve,
when his companions parted from him, with something like pity stirring
in the hearts of all but one among them. Fearfully he looked
around--before him--but no shadow on the earth, no sail upon the
pathless sea, told of man's presence. He was alone--alone indeed, for
the beauty of Nature aroused no emotion in his withered heart, and he
held no communion with Nature's God. He was indeed an orphaned soul.
Could he have loved, had it been but a simple flower, he would have felt
something of the joy of life; but the ver