and his terror seemed to
increase.

"I have another thing to tell you," continued Jack, pausing but a
moment to collect her own thoughts. "Jack Tier--the real Jack Tier--he
who sailed with you of old, and whom you left ashore at the same time
you desarted your wife, _did_ die of the fever, as you was told, in
eight-and-forty hours a'ter the brig went to sea."

"Then who, in the name of Heaven, are you? How came you to hail by
another's name as well as by another sex?"

"What could a woman do, whose husband had desarted her in a strange
land?"

"That is remarkable! So _you_'ve been married? I should not have
thought _that_ possible; and your husband desarted you, too. Well,
such things _do_ happen." Jack now felt a severe pang. She could not
but see that her ungainly--we had almost said her unearthly
appearance--prevented the captain from even yet suspecting the truth;
and the meaning of his language was not easily to be mistaken. That
any one should have married _her_, seemed to her husband as improbable
as it was probable he would run away from her as soon as it was in his
power after the ceremony.

"Stephen Spike," resumed Jack, solemnly, "_I_ am Mary Swash--_I_ am
your wife!"

Spike started in his bed; then he buried his face in the coverlet--and
he actually groaned. In bitterness of spirit the woman turned away and
wept. Her feelings had been blunted by misfortune and the collisions
of a selfish world; but enough of former self remained to make this
the hardest of all the blows she had ever received. Her husband, dying
as he was, as he must and did know himself to be, shrunk from one of
her appearance, unsexed as she had become by habits, and changed by
years and suffering.

[_To be continued_.

AN HOUR.

BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.

I've left the keen, cold winds to blow
Around the summits bare;
My sunny pathway to the sea
Winds downward, green and fair,
And bright-leaved branches toss and glow
Upon the buoyant air!

The fern its fragrant plumage droops
O'er mosses, crisp and gray,
Where on the shaded crags I sit,
Beside the cataract's spray,
And watch the far-off, shining sails
Go down the sunny bay!

I've left the wintry winds of life
On barren hearts to blow--
The anguish and the gnawing care,
The silent, shuddering wo!
Across the balmy sea of dreams