he
decision of fate with regard to some long-cherished desire, who has not
been conscious of a sort of pain,--an unwillingness at once to know what
is therein? We turn the letter again and again, we lay it by and return
to it, and defer from moment to moment the opening of it. So Moses did
not sit down in the first retired spot to ponder the paper. He put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and then, taking up his oars, rowed
across the bay. He did not land at the house, but passed around the
south point of the Island, and rowed up the other side to seek a
solitary retreat in the rocks, which had always been a favorite with him
in his early days.

The shores of the Island, as we have said, are a precipitous wall of
rock, whose long, ribbed ledges extend far out into the sea. At high
tide these ledges are covered with the smooth blue sea quite up to the
precipitous shore. There was a place, however, where the rocky shore
shelved over, forming between two ledges a sort of grotto, whose smooth
floor of shells and many-colored pebbles was never wet by the rising
tide. It had been the delight of Moses when a boy, to come here and
watch the gradual rise of the tide till the grotto was entirely cut off
from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like
security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he
had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be
found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling
futurity.

It was now about half-tide, and Moses left his boat and made his way
over the ledge of rocks toward his retreat. They were all shaggy and
slippery with yellow seaweeds, with here and there among them wide
crystal pools, where purple and lilac and green mosses unfolded their
delicate threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were
tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the pellucid water
lay were in some places crusted with barnacles, which were opening and
shutting the little white scaly doors of their tiny houses, and drawing
in and out those delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of
enjoyment. Moses and Mara had rambled and played here many hours of
their childhood, amusing themselves with catching crabs and young
lobsters and various little fish for these rocky aquariums, and then
studying at their leisure their various ways. Now he had come hither a
man, to learn the secret of his life.

Moses stretched himse