Lord for it! If it wasn't for our
dreams they might as well bury us. How'd we stand living if it wasn't
for our dream of immortality? And that's a dream that's BOUND to come
true, Mistress Blythe. You'll see your little Joyce again some day."

"But she won't be my baby," said Anne, with trembling lips. "Oh, she
may be, as Longfellow says, 'a fair maiden clothed with celestial
grace'--but she'll be a stranger to me."

"God will manage better'n THAT, I believe," said Captain Jim.

They were both silent for a little time. Then Captain Jim said very
softly:

"Mistress Blythe, may I tell you about lost Margaret?"

"Of course," said Anne gently. She did not know who "lost Margaret"
was, but she felt that she was going to hear the romance of Captain
Jim's life.

"I've often wanted to tell you about her," Captain Jim went on.

"Do you know why, Mistress Blythe? It's because I want somebody to
remember and think of her sometime after I'm gone. I can't bear that
her name should be forgotten by all living souls. And now nobody
remembers lost Margaret but me."

Then Captain Jim told the story--an old, old forgotten story, for it
was over fifty years since Margaret had fallen asleep one day in her
father's dory and drifted--or so it was supposed, for nothing was ever
certainly known as to her fate--out of the channel, beyond the bar, to
perish in the black thundersquall which had come up so suddenly that
long-ago summer afternoon. But to Captain Jim those fifty years were
but as yesterday when it is past.

"I walked the shore for months after that," he said sadly, "looking to
find her dear, sweet little body; but the sea never give her back to
me. But I'll find her sometime, Mistress Blythe--I'll find her
sometime. She's waiting for me. I wish I could tell you jest how she
looked, but I can't. I've seen a fine, silvery mist hanging over the
bar at sunrise that seemed like her--and then again I've seen a white
birch in the woods back yander that made me think of her. She had
pale, brown hair and a little white, sweet face, and long slender
fingers like yours, Mistress Blythe, only browner, for she was a shore
girl. Sometimes I wake up in the night and hear the sea calling to me
in the old way, and it seems as if lost Margaret called in it. And
when there's a storm and the waves are sobbing and moaning I hear her
lamenting among them. And when they laugh on a gay day it's HER
laugh--lost Margaret's sweet,