to a partnership in her father's
business, and my fortune would then be secured. You know what happened;
but you do not know how the sight of your face planted the old madness
again in my life, and made me a miserable husband, a miserable man of
wealth, almost a scoffer at the knowledge I had acquired for your sake.

"When my wife died, taking an only child with her, there was nothing
left to me except the mechanical ambition to make myself, without you,
what I imagined I might have become, through you. I have studied and
travelled, lived alone and in society, until your world seemed to be
almost mine: but you were not there!"

The sun had risen, while they sat, rocking on their frail support. Her
hand still lay in his, and her head rested on his shoulder. Every word
he spoke sank into her heart with a solemn sweetness, in which her whole
nature was silent and satisfied. Why should she speak? He knew all.

Yes, it seemed that he knew. His arm stole around her, and her head was
drawn from his shoulder to the warm breadth of his breast.

Something hard pressed her cheek, and she lifted her hand to move it
aside. He drew forth a flat medallion case; and to the unconscious
question in her face, such a sad, tender smile came to his lips, that
she could not repress a sudden pain. Was it the miniature of his dead
wife?

He opened the case, and showed her, under the glass, a faded, pressed
flower.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The Brandywine cowslip you dropped, when you spoke to me in the lane.
Then it was that you showed me the first step of the way."

She laid her head again upon his bosom. Hour after hour they sat, and
the light swells of the sea heaved them aimlessly to and fro, and the
sun burned them, and the spray drenched their limbs. At last Leonard
Clare roused himself and looked around: he felt numb and faint, and he
saw, also, that her strength was rapidly failing.

"We cannot live much longer, I fear," he said, clasping her closely in
his arms. "Kiss me once, darling, and then we will die."

She clung to him and kissed him.

"There is life, not death, in your lips!" he cried. "Oh, God, if we
should live!"

He rose painfully to his feet, stood, tottering? on the raft, and looked
across the waves. Presently he began to tremble, then to sob like a
child, and at last spoke, through his tears:

"A sail! a sail!--and heading towards us!"

MRS. STRONGITHARM'S REPORT.

Mr. Editor,--If you ever read