in this instance, I wish you always to be beautifully
dressed in colors, that will look bright and cheerful. I think it will
have an influence on the child's spirits and thence on her health. I do
not feel that we need to have any compunction about using the things we
find here, for we see that this place must have been deserted many
years ago, and I cannot help thinking that all these costly things are
the plunder of buccaneers."

"Nothing is so probable," answered Mrs. Carleton. "Indeed, when we
consider for a moment, everything seems to say so. Many of those cases
which still remain unopened are such as the merchants bring to the
colony of Virginia. I have seen similar ones there which came from
foreign countries. It occurs to me that all these stores are the cargoes
of ships that have been robbed by those desperate men who have been and
still are the terror of the sea; but why they left this place so
suddenly is difficult to divine, unless, perhaps, retribution fell upon
them when they were out at sea on some of their marauding expeditions.
Evidently a lady has lived here, too; perhaps they took her with them on
their last voyage, and she also may have been lost, so I think we may
feel we are not doing wrong in using such things as are necessary to our
existence while we are here."

The next morning the ladies were up early busying themselves with their
preparations for the child's baptism. As they sat by the open window in
the green parlor, making the little white dress, the sunlight falling
upon the floor, the soft, warm breeze from the south coming in upon
them, and the beautiful child playing about the room, prattling to
herself in her baby language, and trying with her little hands to cover
the colored shadows--butterflies as she called them,--and to hold them
in one place, they each of them thought to themselves how much there is
in life to make us happy; and yet, and yet, who can be happy when there
is an empty place which nothing here can fill. They neither of them
expressed what they thought, for they had each made a resolution to help
the other.

The sea and sky were one beautiful blue; there was just sufficient
breeze to cause white caps at distant intervals, and to toss the surf
lightly against the rocks.

The ladies finished their sewing, and with the child went out to gather
some wild flowers to adorn their parlor for the baptism. In a few
minutes they saw a narrow path which they followed and fou