und, and, after a long blowing of coals and burning
of splinters, began to burn dimly. Hagar set it on the table, and
looked up at her master with a start of alarm, his face was so white
and anxious.

"Hagar," said he, huskily, "_Noll was to start from Hastings this
morning!_"

The old negress stood looking at him a full minute,--a fearful,
lonesome minute in which the rain beat against the panes, and the
awful voice of the sea filled the room,--then she sank down by the
fire with a low cry.

"Lord bress us all!" she wailed, as she looked up, "fur he'll nebber
get here, Mas'r Dick!"

Trafford looked at her silently. Oh, that awful voice without!--the
thunder, the tremble of the earth, the screaming of the wind! At
last,--

"Is ye certain sure, Mas'r Dick? D'ye _know_ he started? Did he say?"

"Oh, Hagar, if I did not--_not know_,--if I had any doubt that he
started, I would give all my possessions this very moment!"

"'Tain't de money nor de lands dat'll do now!" moaned Hagar, beginning
to sway back and forth; "it's only de Lord! De Lord's on de sea
to-night, an' 'tain't fur man to say! Oh, Mas'r Dick! t'ink o' dat
bressed boy in dese waves an' dis wind!"

"Hush!" said the master, imperatively, "I will _not_ think of it! It
can't be! Noll? Oh, Hagar, I believe I'm going mad!" He turned away
from the old negress and opened the door. The tempest swept in,
overturning the candle and flaring up the fire, and bearing the rain,
in one long gust, across the little kitchen, even into Hagar's face.

Trafford stood there, regardless of wind and rain, looking out upon
the sea. The mighty tumult awed him and filled his heart with a sense
of man's utter weakness and helplessness. The foamy expanse gleamed
whitely through the night,--awful with the terror of death,--and its
deafening roar smote upon his ears, and in the slightest lull, the
rain-drops fell with a soft, dull patter. Noll in it all?--in this
fearful, yawning sea,--in this wild tumult of wind and rain,--in the
vast waste of waves which the thick darkness shrouded, and where death
was riding? "God help me!" he cried in sudden frenzy,--"God help me!"
He looked up at the thick, black depths of sky with a groan of agony
when he remembered his utter powerlessness. But what right had he to
look to Heaven for aid?--he who knew not God, nor sought him, nor
desired his love? The bitterness of this thought made him groan and
beat his breast. Would He-