"Oh, cousin! cousin!" said the girl, throwing herself into her arms. "_Is_ this true? Is James _gone_? Can't we do _any_ thing? Can't we get him back? I've been thinking it over. Oh, if the ship wouldn't sail! and I'd go to Salem and beg him to come back, on my knees. Oh, if I had only known yesterday! Oh, cousin, cousin! he wanted to talk with me, and I wouldn't hear him!--oh, if I only had, I could have persuaded him out of it! Oh, why didn't I know?" "There, there, dear child! We must accept it just as it is, now that it is done. Don't feel so. We must try to look at the good." "Oh, show me that letter," said Diana; and Mrs. Pitkin, hoping to tranquilize her, gave her James's note. "He thinks I don't care for him," she said, reading it hastily. "Well, I don't wonder! But I _do_ care! I love him better than anybody or anything under the sun, and I never will forget him; he's a brave, noble, good man, and I shall love him as long as I live--I don't care who knows it! Give me that locket, cousin, and write to him that I shall wear it to my grave." "Dear child, there is no writing to him." "Oh, dear! that's the worst. Oh, that horrid, horrid sea! It's like death--you don't know where they are, and you can't hear from them--and a four years' voyage! Oh, dear! oh, dear!" "Don't, dear child, don't; you distress me," said Mrs. Pitkin. "Yes, that's just like me," said Diana, wiping her eyes. "Here I am thinking only of myself, and you that have had your heart broken are trying to comfort me, and trying to comfort Cousin Silas. We have both of us scolded and flouted him away, and now you, who suffer the most of either of us, spend your breath to comfort us. It's just like you. But, cousin, I'll try to be good and comfort you. I'll try to be a daughter to you. You need somebody to think of you, for you never think of yourself. Let's go in his room," she said, and taking the mother by the hand they crossed to the empty room. There was his writing-table, there his forsaken books, his papers, some of his clothes hanging in his closet. Mrs. Pitkin, opening a drawer, took out a locket hung upon a bit of blue ribbon, where there were two locks of hair, one of which Diana recognized as her own, and one of James's. She hastily hung it about her neck and concealed it in her bosom, laying her hand hard upon it, as if she would still the beatings of her heart. "It seems like a death," she said. "Don't you think the ocean is like death--wide, dark, stormy, unknown? We cannot speak to or hear from them that are on it." "But people can and do come back from the sea," said the mother, soothingly. "I trust, in God's own time, we shall see James back." "But what if we never should? Oh, cousin! I can't help thinking of that. There was Michael Davis,--you know--the ship was never heard from."