earthly ties are riven.
When left alone, how, 'mid our tears, we store
Each breath of their last days upon this shore!

Upon this sunny shore
A little space to wait: the life-bowl broken,
The silver cord unloosed, the mortal name
We bore upon this earth by God's voice spoken,
While at the sound all earthly praise or blame,
Our joys and griefs, alike with gentle sweetness
Fade in the dawn of the next world's completeness.
The hour is thine, dear Lord; we ask no more,
But wait thy summons on the sunny shore.

II

"Thy skies are blue, thy crags as wild,
Thine olive ripe, as when Minerva smiled."

--BYRON.

"So having rung that bell once too often, they were all carried off,"
concluded Inness, as we came up.

"Who?" I asked.

"Look around you, and divine."

We were on Capo San Martino. This, being interpreted, is only Cape
Martin; but as we had agreed to use the "dear old names," we could not
leave out that of the poor cape only because it happened to have six
syllables. We looked around. Before us were ruins--walls built of that
unintelligible broken stone mixed at random with mortar, which confounds
time, and may be, as a construction, five or five hundred years old.

"They--whoever they were--lived here?" I said.

"Yes."

"And it was from here that they were carried off?"

"It was."

"Were they those interesting Greek Lascaris?" said Mrs. Trescott.

"No."

"The Troglodytes?" suggested Mrs. Clary.

"No."

"The poor old ancient gods and goddesses of the coast?" said Margaret.

"No."

"But who carried them off?" I said. "That is the point. It makes all the
difference in the world."

"I know it does," replied Inness; "especially in the case of an
elopement. In this case it happened to be Miss Trescott's friends
(always with two r's), the Sarrasins. The story is but a Mediterranean
version of the boy and the wolf. These ruins are the remains of an
ancient convent built in--in the remote Past. The good nuns, after
taking possession (perhaps they were inland nuns, and did not know what
they were coming to when they came to a shore), began to be in great
fear of the sea and Sarrasin sails. They therefore besought the men of
Mentone and Roccabruna to fly to their aid if at any time they heard the
bell of the chapel ringing rapidly. The men promised, and held
themselves in readiness to fly. One night they heard the bell. Then