Julia Ann lay.

"You're sharp upon the time, Mr. Landholm," said her master; --
"we're just goin' to cast off. But we shouldn't have done it,
nother, till you come. All right!"

"Is all right in the cabin?" said Winthrop as they came on
board.

"Well, it's slicked up all it could be on such short notice,"
said the skipper. "I guess you wont have to live in it long;
the wind's coming up pretty smart ahind us. Haul away there! -- "

It was past six o'clock, and the August sun had much lessened
of its heat, when, as once before with Mr. Landholm for a
passenger, the Julia Ann stood out into the middle of the
river with her head set for the North.

Mrs. Nettley and Clam hid themselves straightway in the
precincts of the cabin. Elizabeth stood still where she had
first placed herself on the deck, in a cold abstracted sort of
carelessness, conscious only that her protector was standing
by her side, and that she was not willing to lose sight of
him. The vessel, and her crew, and their work before her very
eyes, she could hardly be said to see. The sloop got clear of
the wharf and edged out into the mid-channel, where she stood
bravely along before the fair wind. Slowly the trees and
houses along shore were dropped behind, and fresher the wind
and fairer the green river-side seemed to become. Elizabeth's
senses hardly knew it, or only in a kind of underhand way; not
recognized.

"Will you go into the cabin? or will you have a seat here?"
she heard Winthrop say.

Mechanically she looked about for one. He brought a chair and
placed her in it, and she sat down; choosing rather the open
air and free sky than any shut-up place, and his neighbourhood
rather than where he was not; but with a dulled and impassive
state of feeling that refused to take up anything, past,
present or future. It was not rest, it was not relief, though
there was a seeming of rest about it. She knew then it would
not last. It was only a little lull between storms; the
enforced quiet of wearied and worn-out powers. She sat mazily
taking in the sunlight, and the view of the sunlighted earth
and water, the breath of the sweeping fresh air, the creaking
of the sloop's cordage, in the one consciousness that Winthrop
kept his place at her side all this time. How she thanked him
for that! though she could not ask him to sit down, nor make
any sort of a speech about it.

Down went the sun, and the shadows and the sunlight were swept
away together; and