find her again in the morning. He had tried to keep near
her, thinking it worth while to tow her in. Before she ended, the child
was a dead weight in her arms. For an hour they all believed her dead. A
long illness followed; it was Christmas before she crossed the chamber,
and in April Captain Rheid brought her downstairs in his arms.

His wife said he loved Linnet as he would have loved an own daughter. His
heart was more broken than hers.

"Poor father," she would say, stroking his grizzly beard with her thin
fingers; "poor father."

"Cynthy," African John's wife, had a new suggestion every time she was
allowed to see Linnet. Hadn't she waited, and didn't she know? Mightn't
an East Indian have taken him off and carried him to Madras, or somewhere
there, and wasn't he now working his passage home as she had once heard
of a shipwrecked captain doing! Or, perhaps some ship was taking him
around the Horn--it took time to go around that Horn, as everybody
knew--or suppose a whaler had taken him off and carried him up north,
could he expect to get back in a day, and did she want him to find her in
such a plight?

So Linnet hoped and hoped. His mother put on mourning, and had a funeral
sermon preached; and his father put up a grave-stone in the churchyard,
with his name and age engraved on it, and underneath, "Lost at sea."
There were, many such in that country churchyard.

It was two years before Linnet could be persuaded to put on her widow's
mourning, and then she did it to please the two mothers. The color
gradually came back to her cheeks and lips; she moved around with a grave
step, but her hands were never idle. After two years she insisted upon
going back to Will's home, where the shutters had been barred so long,
and the only signs of life were the corn and rye growing in the fields
about it.

Annie Grey was glad to be with her again. She worked at dressmaking; and
spent every night at home with Linnet.

The next summer the travellers returned from abroad; Mr. Holmes, more
perfectly his developed self; little Prue growing up and as charming a
girl as ever papa and mamma had hoped for, prayed for, and worked for;
and Mrs. Holmes, or "Miss Prudence" and "Aunt Prue," as she was called,
a lady whose slight figure had become rounded and whose white hair shaded
a fair face full of peace.

There was no resisting such persuasions as those of Mrs. Kemlo, the
girls' mother, and the "girls" themselves; and almost befo