lay hidden treasures that were immortal, blessings
crowning us with stingless joy; but if you fear suffering, why do you
not fear to die: they say there is a pang in dying?"

"You answered my question, and I must answer yours; but it were better
for you not to know that such things can be in this world. I did not
fear, or rather I courted, the last struggle, because I have found the
agony of life sharper than the agony of death can be." He turned away
abruptly, as he spoke, and seemed desirous to close the interview; and
truly it was a strange conversation which had taken place between those
two, in the midst of that fierce, stormy night, with the waters gaping
open-mouthed for both their lives. It could not have occurred at all
under other circumstances. Two strangers could not thus have told out
their secret thoughts, had they not been driven by uncontrollable
impulse to a close companionship, because of the communion of feeling
which seemed to inspire both in that tremendous hour; but now that it
was past, that they must re-enter on the ordinary routine of life, the
words they had not scrupled to say to one another appeared to them both
as some strange, wild dream. When they met again, it was as though they
never had departed from the ordinary customs of society. Yet this brief
conversation was destined to have a weighty influence on the lives of
both of them.

Their next meeting was in the morning, when all traces of the midnight
storm had passed away--when, brighter and more beautiful than ever
before, the earth, and the sky, and the daylight seemed to the eyes that
had looked on death so near. The passengers were all collected on deck
once more, as they had been when the tempest was raging; but now it was
that they might weep fears of delight as they felt the glow of the
sunshine--that they might revel in the very throbbing of their pulses,
which told how the warm life-blood was careering, unchecked, through
their hearts.

Soon, however, the memory of their danger passed away, like a hateful
dream, and they began, according to the nature of men, to occupy
themselves, with a sort of unconscious interest, in the actual
circumstances passing before them.

The ship in which they were embarked was bound, from the coast of
Ireland to that of England. Her ultimate destination was a seaport town
in Devon; but at present she had suddenly swerved from her course, and
was making for the land just where a tract of richly