enzy that succeeded the shock, he saw afar off, in her white robe, an
angel poised on the waters, beckoning him to follow her to the brighter
and the better world. He loosened the sail, he seized the oars; and the
faster he pursued it, the faster the mocking vision fled from him over
the empty and endless sea.

IX.

THE boat was discovered, on the next morning, from the ship.

All that the devotion of the officers of the _Fortuna_ could do for
their unhappy commander was done on the homeward voyage. Restored to
his own country, and to skilled medical help, the Captain's mind by
slow degrees recovered its balance. He has taken his place in society
again--he lives and moves and manages his affairs like the rest of us.
But his heart is dead to all new emotions; nothing remains in it but the
sacred remembrance of his lost love. He neither courts nor avoids
the society of women. Their sympathy finds him grateful, but their
attractions seem to be lost on him; they pass from his mind as they pass
from his eyes--they stir nothing in him but the memory of Aimata.

"Now you know, ladies, why the Captain will never marry, and why (sailor
as he is) he hates the sight of the sea."

MR. MARMADUKE AND THE MINISTER.

I.

September 13th.--Winter seems to be upon us, on the Highland Border,
already.

I looked out of window, as the evening closed in, before I barred
the shutters and drew the curtains for the night. The clouds hid the
hilltops on either side of our valley. Fantastic mists parted and
met again on the lower slopes, as the varying breeze blew them. The
blackening waters of the lake before our window seemed to anticipate
the coming darkness. On the more distant hills the torrents were just
visible, in the breaks of the mist, stealing their way over the brown
ground like threads of silver. It was a dreary scene. The stillness of
all things was only interrupted by the splashing of our little waterfall
at the back of the house. I was not sorry to close the shutters, and
confine the view to the four walls of our sitting-room.

The day happened to be my birthday. I sat by the peat-fire, waiting
for the lamp and the tea-tray, and contemplating my past life from the
vantage-ground, so to speak, of my fifty-fifth year.

There was wonderfully little to look back on. Nearly thirty years since,
it pleased an all-wise Providence to cast my lot in this remote
Scottish hamlet, and to make me Minister of Cauldkirk, on a s