caution, for ships
will get lost at sea."

North crushed the two letters into his pocket, and walked with rapid
steps towards the tavern. But he only remained long enough to get a
telescope, with which he reappeared, and turned into a path leading to
the bluff. Once upon the ledge, high above the house, he levelled his
glass and took a hasty sweep of the ocean with it. Nothing was in sight
that seemed to interest him, so he turned the glass a little landward
and levelled it on the Piney Cove mansion, which made an imposing
feature in the landscape. From the eminence on which the mansion stood
the grounds sloped down to the water's edge in a closely-shaven lawn,
pleasantly broken up by flower-beds, and knots of old trees that looked
aged and mysterious enough to have watched that distant sweep of sea for
whole centuries.

North seemed to be counting every clump of trees, and calculating the
value of each broad field that stretched back from the crescent-like
Cove.

"It is a glorious old place, and we might live there like monarchs. If I
could only command the winds and waves for one week, now, we might defy
the rest. Half his property! Why, it is splendid; and the will safe."

With these words he turned his glass again. On a clear morning there was
a glorious view from the bluff, showing the full extent of the curving
bay, with its long line of steep woodlands stretching along the coast
and the bright rush of waters beyond, till the eye was lost in the white
line of the distant ocean.

Other mansions peeped out from among the trees, or stood boldly down on
the shore, and on the right hand a small village nestled in at the
furthermost extremity of the bay, forming a pleasant life picture. The
man cared nothing for these things, but turned his glass directly
oceanward, and searched the horizon with keen interest.

A ship hove in sight, like a great white bird, beating up from its nest
in mid-ocean. The heart in that bad man's bosom made a great bound, and
the blasphemy of a thanksgiving sprang to his lips; but the joy was only
for a moment. Dropping his glass, he muttered:

"Madman! to suppose, of all the ships on the ocean, it must be this one.
But if it should--if it should!"

He sat down on a fragment of rock, rested his glass on the drooping
branch of a tree, and watched the ship as it swept through a bank of
luminous fog and took a more definite form. Hitherto it had seemed
floating between a curve of the sk