"Alas, I am doomed to pass my life here. Never more can I see my home, friends or kindred; but on this desolate shore I must end my existence. Fifteen years have come and gone--fifteen long years since I left my home. My wife, no doubt, believing me dead, has ceased to mourn for me. Perhaps--but no, Dorothe never believed in it. God knows what they may have suffered. I am powerless to aid them, and to His hands I entrust them." Heaving a deep sigh, he resumed his painful ruminations: "It might be worse; yes, it might be worse. I might have perished with the others, or I might not have been spared a single companion. God has given me one, and with her I could almost be happy." Returning to his humble cabin he was met by Blanche, who greeted him with a sweet smile. Blanche seemed to grow in goodness and beauty. She was his consoler in his hour of grief. When he was ill with a fever, she held his burning head in her tender arms and soothed his pain. She administered the simple remedies with which they were provided and nursed him back to health. Once, when he was only half conscious, he thought he felt her tears fall on his face and her soft warm lips press his; but it might have been a dream. "You saw no sail this morning, I know; but, there, don't despair, you may yet go home," she said. "No, Blanche, no; I have given up all hope of ever going home. We must end our days here." She looked at him with her great blue eyes so soft and tender, and sighed: "I am sorry for you." "Are you not sorry for yourself?" "No, no; I am not thinking of myself. I am all alone in the world, and it makes little difference where I am." Her voice faltered, and he saw that she was almost choking with grief, and John Stevens, feeling that he had been too selfish all along, said: "Blanche, forgive me. I have had no thought for any one save myself. I have been cruel to neglect you as I have." "Do not blame yourself," she sighed. "Your anxiety for your wife and children outweighs every other consideration." "But when I think how kind and how gentle you have been throughout all these years, how, when the fever burned my brow, it was your soft hand which cooled it and nursed me back to life and reason, and how I have neglected and forgotten you, I feel I have been selfish. Surely you are an angel whom God hath sent me in these hours of loneliness." His natural impulse was to embrace the heroic woman; but he restrained such unholy emotions, and she, with her heart overflowing, sat weeping for joy. In order to change the subject, he said: "Blanche; I have thought that the time has come to explore the peak of Snow-Top." (Snow-Top was the name they had given the tallest mountain in the valley.) "It is the loftiest peak on the island, and from it we might see other islands and continents, and with this glass, perchance, we might get a view of a distant sail."