en, but he had hoped to make amends for all in that future which lay
before him,--that future now, alas! dissolving and fading away like the
white cloud-islands which the wind was drifting from the sky. A voice
seemed saying in his ears, "Ye know that when he would have inherited a
blessing he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though
he sought it carefully with tears." Something that he had never felt
before struck him as appalling in the awful fixedness of all past deeds
and words,--the unkind words once said, which no tears could unsay,--the
kind ones suppressed, to which no agony of wishfulness could give a past
reality. There were particular times in their past history that he
remembered so vividly, when he saw her so clearly,--doing some little
thing for him, and shyly watching for the word of acknowledgment, which
he did not give. Some willful wayward demon withheld him at the moment,
and the light on the little wishful face slowly faded. True, all had
been a thousand times forgiven and forgotten between them, but it is the
ministry of these great vital hours of sorrow to teach us that nothing
in the soul's history ever dies or is forgotten, and when the beloved
one lies stricken and ready to pass away, comes the judgment-day of
love, and all the dead moments of the past arise and live again.

He lay there musing and dreaming till the sun grew low in the afternoon
sky, and the tide that isolated the little grotto had gone far out into
the ocean, leaving long, low reefs of sunken rocks, all matted and
tangled with the yellow hair of the seaweed, with little crystal pools
of salt water between. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and
Captain Kittridge came slowly picking his way round among the shingle
and pebbles.

"Wal', now, I thought I'd find ye here!" he said: "I kind o' thought I
wanted to see ye,--ye see."

Moses looked up half moody, half astonished, while the Captain seated
himself upon a fragment of rock and began brushing the knees of his
trousers industriously, until soon the tears rained down from his eyes
upon his dry withered hands.

"Wal', now ye see, I can't help it, darned if I can; knowed her ever
since she's that high. She's done me good, she has. Mis' Kittridge has
been pretty faithful. I've had folks here and there talk to me
consid'able, but Lord bless you, I never had nothin' go to my heart like
this 'ere--Why to look on her there couldn't nobody doubt but what t