w England's
southern shores. Sailing down this river, and keeping close to the
left-hand bank, one came almost unawares on a sharp bend to the left:
here the river suddenly ended, and the sea began; the rushes and reeds
and high grasses ceased; a low, rocky barrier stayed them. Rounding this
point, lo, your boat swayed instantly to the left: a gentle surf-wave
took possession of you, and irresistibly bore you towards a yellow sand
beach, which curved inward like a reaper's sickle, not more than a
quarter of a mile long, from the handle to the shining point; smooth
and glistening, strewn with polished pebbles and tiny shells, it seemed
some half-hidden magic beach on which shallops of fairies might any
moment come to moor. On the farther point, so close to the sea that it
seemed to rise out of the water, stood a high stone lighthouse, with a
revolving light, whose rays swept the open sea for many miles. The
opposite river bank was a much higher one, and ran farther out to sea.
On this promontory was Safe Haven, a small, thickly settled town, whose
spires and house-tops, as seen from the beach at "The Runs," looked
always like a picture, painted on the sky; white on gray in the morning,
gray on crimson at sunset. The farmhouse of which we have spoken stood
only a few rods back from the beach, and yet it had green fields on
either hand; and a row of Balm of Gilead trees in front; an old and
sandy road, seldom disturbed by wheels, ran between these trees and the
house, and rambled down towards the lighthouse. Wild pea and pimpernel
made this road gay; white clover and wild rose made it fragrant; and
there branched off from it a lane, on which if you turned and strayed
back into the fields, a mile or so, you came to thickets of wild azalia,
and tracts of pink laurel; and, a little way farther in, you came to
fresh-water ponds which in July were white with lilies. No storm ever
lashed the water high on the beach at "The Runs"; no sultriest summer
calm ever stilled it; the even rhythm and delightsome cooling of its
waves seemed to obey a law of their own, quite independent of the great
booming sea outside the lighthouse bar.

In the quiet, and the beauty, and the keen salt air of this charmed
spot, poor Sally Little lifted up her head, and began to live again,
like a flower taken from desert sands and set by a spring. The baby also
bloomed like a rose. In an incredibly short time, both mother and child
had so altered that one