wonder that this new
treasure excited, the host of surmises and dreams to which it gave rise,
were never mentioned to anybody. That it was all of it as much authentic
fact as the Roman history, she did not doubt, but whether it had
happened on Orr's Island or some of the neighboring ones, she had not
exactly made up her mind. She resolved at her earliest leisure to
consult Captain Kittridge on the subject, wisely considering that it
much resembled some of his fishy and aquatic experiences.

Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory, and she would
hum them as she wandered up and down the beach.

"Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Courtsied when you have and kissed
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."

And another which pleased her still more:--

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that can fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange;
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark, now I hear them--ding-dong, bell."

These words she pondered very long, gravely revolving in her little head
whether they described the usual course of things in the mysterious
under-world that lay beneath that blue spangled floor of the sea;
whether everybody's eyes changed to pearl, and their bones to coral, if
they sunk down there; and whether the sea-nymphs spoken of were the same
as the mermaids that Captain Kittridge had told of. Had he not said that
the bell rung for church of a Sunday morning down under the waters?

Mara vividly remembered the scene on the sea-beach, the finding of
little Moses and his mother, the dream of the pale lady that seemed to
bring him to her; and not one of the conversations that had transpired
before her among different gossips had been lost on her quiet, listening
little ears. These pale, still children that play without making any
noise are deep wells into which drop many things which lie long and
quietly on the bottom, and come up in after years whole and new, when
everybody else has forgotten them.

So she had heard surmises as to the remaining crew of that unfortunate
ship, where, perhaps, Moses had a father. And sometimes she wondered if
_he_ were lying fathoms deep with sea-nymphs ringing his knell, and
whether Moses ever thought about him; and yet