said Sally, "Mara read us a story about a ship that was wrecked,
and a spirit called Ariel, that sang a song about the drowned
mariners."

Mara gave a shy, apprehensive glance at Moses, to see if this allusion
called up any painful recollections.

No; instead of this, he was following the motions of his little schooner
on the waters with the briskest and most unconcerned air in the world.

"Why didn't you ever show me that story, Mara?" said Moses.

Mara colored and hesitated; the real reason she dared not say.

"Why, she read it to father and me down by the cove," said Sally, "the
afternoon that you came home from the Banks; I remember how we saw you
coming in; don't you, Mara?"

"What have you done with it?" said Moses.

"I've got it at home," said Mara, in a faint voice; "I'll show it to
you, if you want to see it; there are such beautiful things in it."

That evening, as Moses sat busy, making some alterations in his darling
schooner, Mara produced her treasure, and read and explained to him the
story. He listened with interest, though without any of the extreme
feeling which Mara had thought possible, and even interrupted her once
in the middle of the celebrated--

"Full fathom five thy father lies,"

by asking her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove in a peg to
make it rake a little more. He was, evidently, thinking of no drowned
father, and dreaming of no possible sea-caves, but acutely busy in
fashioning a present reality; and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and,
when she had done, told her that he thought it was a pretty--quite a
pretty story, with such a total absence of recognition that the story
had any affinities with his own history, that Mara was quite astonished.

She lay and thought about him hours, that night, after she had gone to
bed; and he lay and thought about a new way of disposing a pulley for
raising a sail, which he determined to try the effect of early in the
morning.

What was the absolute truth in regard to the boy? Had he forgotten the
scenes of his early life, the strange catastrophe that cast him into his
present circumstances? To this we answer that all the efforts of Nature,
during the early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and
obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day the sorrows
of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on the seashore. The
child that broods, day after day, over some fixed idea, is so far forth
n