Blanche not only had kept a complete journal since the day of their shipwreck, but had written a faithful description of the island, giving its resources and describing the coast. To John it seemed but yesterday since he kissed the tender cheek of his babe, bade his wife a farewell and sailed away. Ten years had made their impress on him. His hair was growing gray, and his beard was quite frosty. It was not age that whitened his hair so much as it was his ten years of suffering. Ten years had developed Blanche from a beautiful girl to a glorious woman of twenty-eight, more beautiful at twenty-eight than eighteen. "Blanche, would ten years change a baby?" John asked. "Yes." "Then my baby is a baby no longer," sighed the father. "No; she is a pretty little girl now." "And has no recollection of her father?" "How could she?" "But my little boy?" "He was five when you left home?" "No, not quite; four and some months." "Then he would remember you." "He is a good-sized boy." "Almost fifteen," she answered. "Heaven grant I may yet see them!" "Amen!" replied Blanche. "God has not forgotten you; our prayers will be heard." John made no answer. He arose, took his gun and went out among the hills. "When he talks of them," Blanche thought, "he always goes to the hills. God grant he does not die of despair, for then I would be all alone on this island of desolation." Tears gathered in her eyes and, falling on her knees, she breathed a fervent prayer. CHAPTER VII. IN WIDOW'S WEEDS. Go; you may call it madness, folly; You may not chase my gloom away. There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay. --ROGERS. Dorothe Stevens was not a woman to take misfortune much to heart. She watched the ship in which her husband sailed until it vanished from sight, shed a few tears, heaved a few sighs and went home to see if the negro slave had prepared breakfast. She smiled next day, and before the week was past she was quite gay. She said she was not going to repine and languish in sorrow. Her conduct shocked the staid Puritans, and her fine apparel was ungodly in their eyes. Weeks rolled on, and no news came from the good ship _Silverwing_; but they might not hear from her for months, and Mrs. Stevens did not borrow trouble. She did not dream that the ship could possibly be lost, or that her husband's voyage could be other than prosperous, so she plunged into a course of extravagance and pleasure that would have ruined a wealthier man than poor John Stevens. "I must do something," she declared, "to relieve my mind from thoughts of my poor, dear, absent husband, for whom I grieve continually."