etters the tenor of
which would have enabled her to remain longer in Italy. Ossoli
remembered the warning of a fortune-teller, who in his childhood had
told him to beware of the sea. Margaret wrote of omens which gave her "a
dark feeling." She had "a vague expectation of some crisis," she knows
not what; and this year, 1850, had long appeared to her a period of
pause in the ascent of life, a point at which she should stand, as "on a
plateau, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before." She
prays fervently that she may not lose her boy at sea, "either by
unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli,
Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief."

These presentiments, strangely prophetic, returned upon Margaret with so
much force that on the very day appointed for sailing, the 17th of May,
she stood at bay before them for an hour, unable to decide whether she
should go or stay. But she had appointed a general meeting with her
family in July, and had positively engaged her passage in the barque.
Fidelity to these engagements prevailed with her. She may have felt,
too, the danger of being governed by vague forebodings which, shunning
death in one form, often invite it in another. And so, in spite of fears
and omens, too well justified in the sequel, she went on board, and the
voyage began in smooth tranquillity.

The first days at sea passed quietly enough. The boy played on the deck,
or was carried about by the captain. Margaret and her husband suffered
little inconvenience from seasickness, and were soon walking together in
the limited space of their floating home. But presently the good captain
fell ill with small-pox of a malignant type. On June 3d the barque
anchored off Gibraltar, the commander breathed his last, and was
accorded a seaman's burial, in the sea. Here the ship suffered a
detention of some days from unfavorable winds, but on the 9th was able
to proceed on her way; and two days later Angelo showed symptoms of the
dreadful disease, which visited him severely. His eyes were closed, his
head swollen, his body disfigured by the accompanying eruption. Margaret
and Ossoli, strangers to the disease, hung over their darling, and
nursed him so tenderly that he was in due time restored, not only to
health, but also to his baby beauty, so much prized by his mother.

Margaret wrote from Gibraltar, describing the captain's illness and
death, and giving a graph