n loosening the sails
and in casting off the fasts. The movement of the bark was at first slow
and heavy, for the wind was intercepted by the buildings of the town; but,
as she receded from the shore, the canvass began to flap and belly, and
ere long it filled outward with a report like that of a musket; after
which the motion of the travellers began to bear some relation to their
nearly exhausted patience.

Soon after the party which had been so long detained at the water-gate
were embarked, Adelheid first learned the reason of the delay. She had
long known, from the mouth of her father, the name and early history of
the Signor Grimaldi, a Genoese of illustrious family, who had been the
sworn friend and the comrade of Melchior de Willading, when the latter
pursued his career in arms in the wars of Italy. These circumstances
having passed long before her own birth, and even before the marriage of
her parents, and she being the youngest and the only survivor of a
numerous family of children, they were, as respected herself, events that
already began to assume the hue of history. She received the old man
frankly and even with affection, though in his yielding but still fine
form, she had quite as much difficulty as her father in recognizing the
young, gay, gallant, brilliant, and handsome Gaetano Grimaldi that her
imagination had conceived from the verbal descriptions she had so often
heard, and from her fancy was still wont to draw as he was painted in the
affectionate descriptions of her father. When he suddenly and
affectionately offered a kiss, the color flushed her face, for no man but
he to whom she owed her being had ever before taken that liberty; but,
after an instant of virgin embarrassment, she laughed, and blushingly
presented her cheek to receive the salute.

"The last tidings I had of thee, Melchior," said the Italian, "was the
letter sent by the Swiss Ambassador, who took our city in his way as he
traveled south, and which was written on the occasion of the birth of this
very girl."

"Not of this, dear friend, but of an elder sister, who is, long since, a
cherub in heaven. Thou seest the ninth precious gift that God bestowed,
and thou seest all that is now left of his bounty."

The countenance of the Signor Grimaldi lost its joyousness, and a deep
pause in the discourse succeeded. They lived in an age when communications
between friends that were separated by distance, and by the frontiers of
different