y and the blue line of water, but now
it came out clearly, and as North looked he saw a dark pile of
storm-clouds muster up behind it with slow, threatening danger.

Hour after hour the man sat and watched that one object. The glass was a
powerful one, and seconded his keen vigilance. At length he was
rewarded, a burst of sunshine fell upon the vessel, the last that
illuminated the horizon that day, and he saw her name on the stern. The
telescope dropped from his hand, his face turned pale; the cry that
leaped to his lips perished there. The man was frightened by the
completion of his own wishes. Had some evil spirit performed a miracle
for him?

All the time this man had been watching, a tempest blackly followed the
homeward-bound ship. The ocean began to dash and torment itself into a
fury of wrath. A high wind came roaring up from the bosom of the waters,
and over all gathered a world of lurid gloom, kindled fiercely red by
the sun when it went down, and slowly engulfed the ship, which was last
seen struggling fearfully in the wild upheaving of the elements.

North seemed possessed of a demon that night. He left his telescope on
the earth, and went desperately to work, gathering up dry wood and
brush, which he stacked on the overhanging ledge, never pausing till a
great mound was created sufficiently large to keep a fire blazing all
night. By the time this was done the darkness became profound. Now arid
then he could see drifts of foam tossed upwards, like the fluttering
garments of a ghost fleeing from the storm. The little tavern at the
foot of the rock was lost in the overwhelming darkness. The lights from
the village seemed put out, and there was no vestige of Piney Cove
visible. No rain, as yet had fallen; and at this North rejoiced, for his
stock of wood was like tinder in its dryness, and the wind came fiercely
from the ocean, so fiercely that it threatened the death of any vessel
approaching the shore.

With all these elements of terror surrounding him, North worked till the
perspiration dropped from his forehead like rain. That cliff had been
blackened before with wreckers' fires, but never had a man heaped wood
upon wood with so vivid a conviction of the crime he meditated, with
such earnest desire for death to follow his toil.

When the evening had reached its darkest gloom, this man struck a match,
which he took from his pocket in a little case of enamelled gold--for
even in his crimes he was dainty-