d previously withdrawn from the old sailor, went back to him,
and looked again through the glass. The twinkling was the light falling
upon the cabin windows of the ship's stern. She explained it to the old
man.

'Then we see now what the enemy have seen but once. That was in seventy-
nine, when she sighted the French and Spanish fleet off Scilly, and she
retreated because she feared a landing. Well, 'tis a brave ship and she
carries brave men!'

Anne's tender bosom heaved, but she said nothing, and again became
absorbed in contemplation.

The Victory was fast dropping away. She was on the horizon, and soon
appeared hull down. That seemed to be like the beginning of a greater
end than her present vanishing. Anne Garland could not stay by the
sailor any longer, and went about a stone's-throw off, where she was
hidden by the inequality of the cliff from his view. The vessel was now
exactly end on, and stood out in the direction of the Start, her width
having contracted to the proportion of a feather. She sat down again,
and mechanically took out some biscuits that she had brought, foreseeing
that her waiting might be long. But she could not eat one of them;
eating seemed to jar with the mental tenseness of the moment; and her
undeviating gaze continued to follow the lessened ship with the fidelity
of a balanced needle to a magnetic stone, all else in her being
motionless.

The courses of the Victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails
went, and then her top-gallants. She was now no more than a dead fly's
wing on a sheet of spider's web; and even this fragment diminished. Anne
could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. The
admiral's flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very
truck of the last topmast stole away. The Victory was gone.

Anne's lip quivered as she murmured, without removing her wet eyes from
the vacant and solemn horizon, '"They that go down to the sea in ships,
that do business in great waters--"'

'"These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep,"' was
returned by a man's voice from behind her.

Looking round quickly, she saw a soldier standing there; and the grave
eyes of John Loveday bent on her.

''Tis what I was thinking,' she said, trying to be composed.

'You were saying it,' he answered gently.

'Was I?--I did not know it. . . . How came you here?' she presently
added.

'I have been behind you a good while