ple was when
they, through the glass, saw the Stars and Stripes fluttering from the
mizzen of the ship which came the nearest and then made off again. The
sight of that most beautiful banner in the world was like a glimpse of
their distant New England home, and they seemed to feel the cool
breeze fanning their hot brows as it bore steadily toward them.

When it went over the convex sea out of sight, Captain Bergen covered
his face with his hands and wept, and when, after awhile, he looked up
again, he saw the tears on the cheeks of Abe Storms, who stood
motionless and gazing silently off upon the deep, as if he expected
the vessel would come back to them. It was a severe blow, and it was a
long time before they recovered from it.

The exact age of Inez Hawthorne when she became, by an extraordinary
turn of the wheel of fortune, the protegee of the two sailors, was, as
given by herself, six years, but both the captain and mate were
confident that she was fully one, if not two years older.

Now, at the termination of the period named, she was a girl as fully
developed mentally and physically as one of a dozen years, and she was
growing into a woman of striking beauty. She was still a child, with
all the innocence and simplicity which distinguished her at the time
she was taken from the deck of the steamer _Polynesia_, but in a few
years more, should she be spared, she would become a woman.

Captain Bergen and Mate Storms were honest, conscientious men, and
Christians, and they performed their full duty in that most important
respect to Inez Hawthorne. Never passed a day in which Storms did not
read, in an impressive voice, from the great Book of all books, and
the sublime passages, the wonderful precepts, the divine truths and
the sacred instruction from that volume were seed which fell upon good
ground and bore its fruit in due season.

If ever there was a good, pure, devout Christian, Inez Hawthorne
became one, and her greatest desire, as she repeatedly expressed it,
was that she might go out in the great world among all people, and do
her utmost to carry the glad tidings to them.

"The time will come," replied Abe Storms, when he listened to these
glowing wishes. "God never intended you should live and die upon this
lonely island when there is such need for missionaries like you. I
don't see that we are of much account, but I believe He has something
for us, too, and we shall be given the opportunity to do it."