ged some new treasure, in some rarer
shell or smoother pebble.

Suddenly, the child shook out something from a knotted mass of
sea-grass, which she held up with a perfect shriek of delight. It was a
bracelet of hair, fastened by a brilliant clasp of green, sparkling
stones, such as she had never seen before. She redoubled her cries of
delight, as she saw it sparkle between her and the sun, calling upon her
father.

"Father! father! do come here, and see what I've found!"

He came quickly, and took the bracelet from the child's hand; but, at
the same moment, looking over her head, he caught sight of an object
partially concealed behind a projecting rock. He took a step forward,
and uttered an exclamation,--

"Well, well! sure enough! poor things!"

There lay, bedded in sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped
in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was
held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot
that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which
had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering
morsels of sand and pebbles, and with those tiny, brilliant, yellow
shells which are so numerous on that shore.

The woman was both young and beautiful. The forehead, damp with
ocean-spray, was like sculptured marble,--the eyebrows dark and decided
in their outline; but the long, heavy, black fringes had shut down, as a
solemn curtain, over all the history of mortal joy or sorrow that those
eyes had looked upon. A wedding-ring gleamed on the marble hand; but the
sea had divorced all human ties, and taken her as a bride to itself.
And, in truth, it seemed to have made to her a worthy bed, for she was
all folded and inwreathed in sand and shells and seaweeds, and a great,
weird-looking leaf of kelp, some yards in length, lay twined around her
like a shroud. The child that lay in her bosom had hair, and face, and
eyelashes like her own, and his little hands were holding tightly a
portion of the black dress which she wore.

"Cold,--cold,--stone dead!" was the muttered exclamation of the old
seaman, as he bent over the woman.

"She must have struck her head there," he mused, as he laid his finger
on a dark, bruised spot on her temple. He laid his hand on the child's
heart, and put one finger under the arm to see if there was any
lingering vital heat, and then hastily cut the lashings that bound the
pair to the spar, a