n blades, thinking of the lad. Did ever the sea quench a fairer,
brighter life? he wondered,--a life fuller of rich and generous
promise? Yet, only two short weeks ago,--short, in reality, but slow
and long in passing,--the boy had sat upon this little breadth of
verdure full of life and spirits and happiness.

"Ah!" sighed he, "I knew not a treasure I possessed till it passed
from me. Now that I have lost it, I see what a blissful life I might
have made for myself and it. God forgive me! but I was harsh and cruel
to the boy. I made his life darker and less joyous than it ought to
have been."

He sat here for a long time, till once more his face was calm and
undisturbed. Sometime, he thought, he might meet the boy face to face,
and tell him all that his heart longed to unburden itself of. He rose
up, at last, and went slowly in, pausing at the library-door. After a
few seconds of indecision, he opened it, and went softly in. The room
was cold and chilly from its long unoccupancy; but through one of the
high windows, and along the floor, streamed a broad bar of cheerful
sunlight. It fell right across Noll's study-table and the chair which
he was wont to occupy. Trafford moved forward, sat down in the chair,
and looked about him with misty eyes. Traces of the boy's presence
everywhere! The familiar school-books, open to the last lessons which
Trafford had heard him recite; bits of paper, with sums and solutions
traced thereon; copies of the fine and feathery sea-moss, which it was
the boy's delight to gather, with odd pebbles and shells, met his gaze
on either hand. He took up a scrap of paper from among the rest, and
found something thereon which the boy had written, evidently in an
idle moment. Trafford, however, read it not without emotion. It merely
said:--

"_Wednes., Aug. 24._--This is a long, gray, rainy day, and I have not
stirred out of the house. I am at this moment (or ought to be)
studying my Latin lesson. Uncle Richard has not spoken a word to me
since breakfast. I wish I knew what made him look so grim and sober
to-day, and I _do_ wish he would speak to me. When the fog lifted just
now, I fancied I saw a ship on the horizon, bound for Hastings, I
suppose. Oh, but I--"

Here the slight record was broken off. Perhaps the boy had gone back
to his Latin, or perhaps the passing ship had taken his thoughts along
with it to Hastings, and thus left the half-commenced exclamation
unfinished. Trafford rea