llading's should show this sign of impatience; partly in compliment to
those whom he expected, and partly as a signal that might be really useful
to those who navigated the Leman, in a night that threatened so much murky
obscurity.

The Signor Grimaldi rightly deemed the circumstances grave, and, calling
to him his friend and Sigismund, he communicated the apprehensions of the
monk and Maso. A braver man than Melchior de Willading did not dwell in
all Switzerland, but he did not hear the gloomy predictions of the Genoese
without shaking in every limb.

"My poor enfeebled Adelheid!" he said, yielding to a father's tenderness:
"what will become of this frail plant, if exposed to a tempest in an
unsheltered bark?"

"She will be with her father, and with her father's friend," answered the
maiden herself; for the narrow limits to which they were necessarily
confined, and the sudden burst of feeling in the parent, which had
rendered him incautious in pitching his voice, made her the mistress of
the cause of alarm. "I have heard enough of what the good Father Xavier
and this mariner have said, to know that we are in a situation that might
be better; but am I not with tried friends? I know already what the Herr
Sigismund can do in behalf of my life, and come what may, we have all a
beneficent guardian in One, who will not leave any of us to perish without
remembering we are his children."

"This girl shames us all," said the Signor Grimaldi; "but it is often thus
with these fragile beings, who rise the firmest and noblest in moments
when prouder man begins to despair. They put their trust in God, who is a
prop to sustain even those who are feebler than our gentle Adel held. But
we will not exaggerate the causes of apprehension, which, after all, may
pass away like many other threatening dangers, and leave us hours of
felicitation and laughter in return for a few minutes of fright."

"Say, rather of thanksgiving," observed the clavier, "for the aspect of
the heavens is getting to be fearfully solemn. Thou, who art a
mariner--hast thou nothing to suggest?"

"We have the simple expedient of our sweeps, father; but, after neglecting
their use so long, it is now too late to have recourse to them. We could
not reach Vevey by such means, with this bark loaded to the water's edge,
before the night would change, and, the water once fairly in motion, they
could not be used at all."

"But we have our sails," put in the Genoese; "th