t she selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing
to the contrary.

There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over
her constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before
her disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to
her growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and
coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy
of a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but
now she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still
clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed
and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the
sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a
tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether
in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often
been her lullaby,--a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have
sung.

"You are getting to look like your father," Aunt Silence said one day;
"I never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major
Gideon Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor
Charles,--or at any rate, that you may be prepared."

It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world
at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and
said, "Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place
as you say it is?"

"I'm afraid you are not fit for a better."

She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for
heaven.

For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been
an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent
resident. Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest
for her soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without
waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers
to use for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and
admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by
imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be
over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.

Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,--her own responsibility, and
the dreadful consequences which would follow to her, Sil