s. The world--with what degree
of truth cannot now be told--had charged the loss upon intoxication. A
storm of obloquy and reproach arose. The man, bowed down with
self-abasement and sensitiveness, had yielded to the blast, and
attempted no defence; and, after awhile, obtaining, through some
friendly influence, the custody of the Beacon Light, he had fled, with
his child, to that obscurity, leaving no trace behind him, and caring
only to pass the rest of his life in the quiet of the world's
forgetfulness.

I was myself the occasional tenant of a lighthouse, for, during a few
weeks of the summer, I had been visiting the Penguin Light, some four
or five miles distant up the coast. It was a tall and far-reaching
structure, standing upon a jutting point of rock--almost the duplicate
of the Beacon Ledge; the two lights glimmering at each other across
the little bay between, and only to be distinguished apart at night by
the different periods of their revolutions. Penguin Light was in the
keeping of old Barry Somers, a long-known and valued sailor-friend of
mine, who, in past days, had taught me to swim, and sail a boat, and
now seemed to regard his office more for the opportunity it gave of
entertaining me than for its actual salaried value. Thither,
therefore, I would often repair during the summer months, avoiding the
usual crowded haunts, and giving preference to old Barry's pleasant
talk and my solitary rambles along the shore; occasionally running out
to sea, that I might speak friendly pilots cruising in the distance;
and now and then, by way of change and innocent attempt at usefulness,
taking my turn at keeping up and watching over the safety of the
lantern-lamps.

It was during one of my lonely wanderings along the beach, when, with
gun in hand, I made feeble and unsuccessful attempts against the lives
of the merry little sand-pipers, that I first saw Jessie. She sat upon
a rock, and was gazing out at sea. In her hand was a book, which she
was not reading--who, indeed, could read collectedly, with that fresh
breeze lifting such a pleasant array of dancing white-caps, and
rolling inward those strong bodies of surf, which broke upon the shore
with the ring of sportive Titans? Her handkerchief had fallen off her
head, and her curls were flying wantonly in the breeze. I did not, for
the moment, dream that she had any connection with the lighthouse,
but rather that she was a chance city visitor at some inland
country-