nes.

"I went to the cliff this morning," she said, "thinking I might see a
sail, but I was disappointed."

"Why did you think to see a sail, Blanche?" he asked.

"I dreamed last night that a ship came for you and took you home. Oh,
how glad I was, when I saw you happy again with your dear wife and the
baby on your knee, its little warm hands on your face!"

After a long silence, he asked:

"Blanche, how long have we been here?"

"Ten years," she answered.

Blanche not only had kept a complete journal since the day of their
shipwreck, but had written a faithful description of the island, giving
its resources and describing the coast. To John it seemed but yesterday
since he kissed the tender cheek of his babe, bade his wife a farewell
and sailed away.

Ten years had made their impress on him. His hair was growing gray, and
his beard was quite frosty. It was not age that whitened his hair so
much as it was his ten years of suffering. Ten years had developed
Blanche from a beautiful girl to a glorious woman of twenty-eight, more
beautiful at twenty-eight than eighteen.

"Blanche, would ten years change a baby?" John asked.

"Yes."

"Then my baby is a baby no longer," sighed the father.

"No; she is a pretty little girl now."

"And has no recollection of her father?"

"How could she?"

"But my little boy?"

"He was five when you left home?"

"No, not quite; four and some months."

"Then he would remember you."

"He is a good-sized boy."

"Almost fifteen," she answered.

"Heaven grant I may yet see them!"

"Amen!" replied Blanche. "God has not forgotten you; our prayers will be
heard."

John made no answer. He arose, took his gun and went out among the
hills.

"When he talks of them," Blanche thought, "he always goes to the hills.
God grant he does not die of despair, for then I would be all alone on
this island of desolation."

Tears gathered in her eyes and, falling on her knees, she breathed a
fervent prayer.

CHAPTER VII.

IN WIDOW'S WEEDS.

Go; you may call it madness, folly;
You may not chase my gloom away.
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay.
--ROGERS.

Dorothe Stevens was not a woman to take misfortune much to heart. She
watched the ship in which her husband sailed until it vanished from
sight, shed a few tears, heaved a few sighs and went home to see if the
negro slave had prepar