n a stone and, passing his hand over his
eyes, brushed away a tear which came unbidden there.

"Alas, I am doomed to pass my life here. Never more can I see my home,
friends or kindred; but on this desolate shore I must end my existence.
Fifteen years have come and gone--fifteen long years since I left my
home. My wife, no doubt, believing me dead, has ceased to mourn for me.
Perhaps--but no, Dorothe never believed in it. God knows what they may
have suffered. I am powerless to aid them, and to His hands I
entrust them."

Heaving a deep sigh, he resumed his painful ruminations:

"It might be worse; yes, it might be worse. I might have perished with
the others, or I might not have been spared a single companion. God has
given me one, and with her I could almost be happy."

Returning to his humble cabin he was met by Blanche, who greeted him
with a sweet smile. Blanche seemed to grow in goodness and beauty. She
was his consoler in his hour of grief. When he was ill with a fever, she
held his burning head in her tender arms and soothed his pain. She
administered the simple remedies with which they were provided and
nursed him back to health. Once, when he was only half conscious, he
thought he felt her tears fall on his face and her soft warm lips press
his; but it might have been a dream.

"You saw no sail this morning, I know; but, there, don't despair, you
may yet go home," she said.

"No, Blanche, no; I have given up all hope of ever going home. We must
end our days here."

She looked at him with her great blue eyes so soft and tender, and
sighed:

"I am sorry for you."

"Are you not sorry for yourself?"

"No, no; I am not thinking of myself. I am all alone in the world, and
it makes little difference where I am." Her voice faltered, and he saw
that she was almost choking with grief, and John Stevens, feeling that
he had been too selfish all along, said:

"Blanche, forgive me. I have had no thought for any one save myself. I
have been cruel to neglect you as I have."

"Do not blame yourself," she sighed. "Your anxiety for your wife and
children outweighs every other consideration."

"But when I think how kind and how gentle you have been throughout all
these years, how, when the fever burned my brow, it was your soft hand
which cooled it and nursed me back to life and reason, and how I have
neglected and forgotten you, I feel I have been selfish. Surely you are
an angel whom God hath sent me in these h