nse expression, for which they had always
been remarkable. All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was
looking out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at
times in the silence of eyes.

"Now bless that ar gal," said the Captain, when he saw her. "Our Sally
here's handsome, but she's got the real New-Jerusalem look, she
has--like them in the Revelations that wears the fine linen, clean and
white."

"Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool of yourself
about no girl at your time o' life," said Mrs. Kittridge, speaking under
her breath in a nipping, energetic tone, for they were coming too near
the boat to speak very loud.

"Good mornin', Mis' Pennel; we've got a good day, and a mercy it is so.
'Member when we launched the North Star, that it rained guns all the
mornin', and the water got into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the
things over, and made a sight o' pester."

"Yes," said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction, "everything
seems to be going right about this vessel."

Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with seats, and
Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming sail. The day was one of
those perfect gems of days which are to be found only in the
jewel-casket of October, a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so
clear that every distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness,
and every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in crystalline
clearness against the sky. There was so brisk a breeze that the boat
slanted quite to the water's edge on one side, and Mara leaned over and
pensively drew her little pearly hand through the water, and thought of
the days when she and Moses took this sail together--she in her pink
sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with a tin dinner-pail
between them; and now, to-day the ship of her childish dreams was to be
launched. That launching was something she regarded almost with
superstitious awe. The ship, built on one element, but designed to have
its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, framed and fashioned
with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true
element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. Such was her
thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it
have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?--to Sally Kittridge,
for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside
her, and who would have sh