ing, now more than seven
years ago, and when I too saw the _Saint Pierre_ with you on her deck,
and more wonderful still, when the captain and some of the crew even to
_this_ day insist we were actually several hundreds of miles apart!"

"Ah, but you are near me now, though, thank God!" she cried, looking up
into my face with the most charming expression of delight, causing me to
be foolish in bestowing another little kiss on her upturned face. "I
don't know how it was, but whether the ships were as far apart as the
captain and the others say, or whether they were not, I did see your
ship and you on her, as I told my dear, dear father at the time, and he
himself did not believe it. Dick, dear, it must have been the gift of
`second sight,' as the Scotch people call it. There was a nun at the
convent who had it, and could tell, so she said, when anything was about
to happen to any of her family, though she couldn't predict events
concerning persons who were not `blood relations,' as she termed them.
Don't be frightened, Dick, but I do think that I must really possess the
same faculty!"

"Well, if that is the case, sweetheart," said I, "there must be some
psychological affinity between us, and we are both endowed with the same
weird gift, although the possession of the same has never been brought
to the knowledge of us except on that one memorable occasion. That
cannot be otherwise explained; but the fact of the two ships meeting
afterwards may very readily be accounted for under the circumstances.
The winds and currents of the ocean drifted them together, like as they
did us, dear. Don't you think so?"

She did not answer for a moment, and, as our steamer speeded on her way,
the glow in the sky gradually faded and darkness crept over the face of
the sea, the flashing light of Ushant whirling its luminous arms round
in rapid rotation, like some spectral windmill, away in the distance
over our lee, where the French ship had long since disappeared.

Presently my Elsie, who had been looking down into the now gloomy depths
alongside, musing over the bitter-sweet memories of the past, lifted her
eyes to mine, glancing heavenwards.

"No, Dick, my dearest," said she, speaking at last, a certain hesitation
and catch in her throat and a tear in the broken intonation of her
voice, "Dick, I've been thinking and--and--it was a power greater than
that of the winds and seas that brought us together. It was God!"

THE END.