ad the weary miner laid aside his tool to wipe his
sweating brow, before the metals required for the completion had been
brought from darkness;--what thousands had been employed before it was
prepared and ready for its destined use! Yon copper bolt, twisted with
a force not human, and raised above the waters, as if in evidence of
their dreadful power, may contain a history in itself.

How many of her own structure must have been employed, bringing from the
north, the south, the east, and the west: her masts, her spars, her
"_hempen tackle_," and her canvass wings; her equipment in all its
variety; her stores for the support of life; her magazines of _quiescent
death_. And they who so fearlessly trod her decks, conscious of their
own powers, and confident in their own skill; they who expanded her
thousands of yards of canvass to the pursuing breeze, or reduced them,
like magic, at the approaching storm--where are they now? How many
sighs have been lavished at their absence! how many hearths would have
been gladdened by their return! Where are the hopes, the fears, the
ambition, and the pride; the courage and the enterprise; the love and
the yearnings after their kin; the speculations of the present, and the
calculations of the future, which occupied their minds, or were
cherished in their bosoms? All--all _wrecked_!

Days, weeks, and months rolled away; yet every step that could be taken
to find out the name of the vessel proved unavailing. Although the
conjectures of Forster, that she was one of the many foreign West
Indiamen which had met with a similar fate during that tempestuous
winter, was probably correct; still no clue could be gathered by which
the parentage of the little girl could be ascertained, The linen was
indeed marked with initials; but this circumstance offered but a faint
prospect of discovery. Either her relations, convinced of her loss made
no inquiries, or the name of the vessel in which she had been a
passenger was not known to them. The child had been weaned, and removed
to the cottage, where it occupied much of the attention of the old
housekeeper and Forster, who, despairing of its ever being reclaimed,
determined to bring it up as his own.

Mrs Beazeley, the housekeeper, was a good-tempered woman, long passed
the grand climacteric, and strongly attached to Forster, with whom she
had resided many years. But, like all women, whether married or single,
who have the responsibility of a h