d outlines;
-- and there was a contrast! She did not cry; she looked, with
a cold chilled feeling of eye and mind that would have been
almost despair, if it had not been for the one friend asleep
at her side. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. He was
nothing to her. Elizabeth said it to herself; but for all that
he was there, and it was a comfort to see him there.

The sails rattled down to the deck; and with wind and headway
the sloop gently swung up to her appointed place. Another
light came out of the house, in a lantern; and another hand on
shore aided the sloop's crew in making her fast.

"How can he sleep through it all!" thought Elizabeth. "I
wonder if anything ever could shake him out of his settled
composure -- asleep or awake, it's all the same."

"Ain't you goin' ashore?" said the skipper at her side.

"No -- not now."

"They'll slick up a better place for you than we could fix up
in this here little hulk. Though she ain't a small sloop
neither, by no means."

"What have you got aboard there, Hild'?" called out a voice
that came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the lantern.
"Gals?"

"Governor Landholm and some company," said the skipper in a
more moderate tone. The other voice took no hint of
moderation.

"Governor Landholm? -- is _he_ along? Well -- glad to see him. Run
from the yallow fever, eh?"

"Is mother up, father?"

"Up? -- no! -- What on arth!"

"Tell her to get up, and make some beds for folks that
couldn't sleep aboard sloop; and have been navigatin' all
night."

"Go, and I'll look after the sloop till morning, Captain,"
said Winthrop sitting up on his sail.

"Won't you come ashore and be comfortable?" said father and
son at once.

"I am comfortable."

"But you'll be better off there, Governor."

"Don't think I could, Hild'. I'm bound to stay by the ship."

"Won't you come, Miss?" said the skipper addressing Elizabeth.
"You'll be better ashore."

"Oh yes -- come along -- all of you," said the old sloop-master
on the land.

"I'm in charge of the passengers, Captain," said Winthrop;
"and I don't think it is safe for any of them to go off before
morning."

The request was urged to Elizabeth. But Winthrop quietly
negatived it every time it was made; and the sloop's masters
at last withdrew. Elizabeth had not spoken at all.

"How do you do?" said Winthrop gravely, when the Cowslips,
father and son, had turned their backs upon the vessel.

"Thank you --" said El