uickening of his imagination.

Quick upon the heels of these high dreams came their test, for life is
not a dream.

Between the Magdalen Islands and the mainland, besides the many stray
schooners that came and went, there were two lines of regular
communication--one was by a sailing vessel which carried freight
regularly to and from the port of Gaspe; the other was by a small
packet steamer that once a week came from Nova Scotia and Prince
Edward's Island, and returned by the same route. It was by this steamer,
on her first appearance, that Caius ought reasonably to return to his
home. She would come as soon as the ice diminished; she would bring him
news, withheld for four months, of how his parents had fared in his
absence. Caius had not yet decided that he would go home by the first
trip; the thought of leaving, when it forced itself upon him, was very
painful. This steamer was the first arrival expected, and the islanders,
eager for variety and mails, looked excitedly to see the ice melt or be
drifted away. Caius looked at the ice ring with more intense longing,
but his longing was that it should remain. His wishes, like prayers,
besought the cold winds and frosty nights to conserve it for him.

It so happened that the Gaspe schooner arrived before the southern
packet, and lay outside of the ice, waiting until she could make her way
through. So welcome was the sight that the islanders gathered upon the
shores of the bay just for the pleasure of looking at her as she lay
without the harbour. Caius looked at her, too, and with comparative
indifference, for he rejoiced that he was still in prison.

Upon that day the night fell just as it falls upon all days; but at
midnight Caius had a visitor. O'Shea came to him in the darkness.

Caius was awakened from sound sleep by a muffled thumping at his door
that was calculated to disturb him without carrying sharp sound into the
surrounding air. His first idea was that some drunken fellow had
blundered against his wall by mistake. As the sounds continued and the
full strangeness of the event, in that lonely place, entered his waking
brain, he arose with a certain trepidation akin to that which one feels
at the thought of supernatural visitors, a feeling that was perhaps the
result of some influence from the spirit of the man outside the door;
for when he opened it, and held his candle to O'Shea's face, he saw a
look there that made him know certainly that something was wro