or
slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,--days all sunny,
nights moon-lit. To the right,--not discernible, but he knows they are
there,--the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous
Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad
sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a
stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and
vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid
venture for him,--twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the
decks,--in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the
silent stars,--he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble
Doctor shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his
charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will
live--

Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and
gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he
chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a
short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.

"Good God! what trust!"--it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather
than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of
unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him
kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea
swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,--afloat. Whither
bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he
bethinks himself,--does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic
utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like
leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached
over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and
yet,--and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces
beam upon him,--a mother's, Adele's,--nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of
the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled
with truth.

Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The
sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head
of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet
the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing