The incoming tide was almost at the full, and the surf sounded like a moaning voice from the sea. It was to the young girl's tortured imagination a warning voice, bidding her heed that the fashion of this world must pass away, and with it the souls of its children, who, like merry little ones gathering flowers in fair fields, unheeding, unthinking, grow grave only as the day draws on. It told her that they grow wise--sad, perhaps--as the sun sinks; and that when the darkness falls they lie down to sleep, with tired brains and heavy hearts, all their buoyancy gone with the day's brightness. They have come to know its bitter lesson of weary struggle, of sore disappointment and heart-breaks. The sky was filled with broken banks of ragged clouds that sent great tattered streamers across the zenith, entangling the glittering stars that seemed struggling to push them away, as if they were smothering draperies, from before their silvery faces. Over in the east a faint spot of dusky red was showing in a cloud-rift. It was the rising moon, seeming to battle, like the stars, with the black hosts seeking to envelop it. It fought bravely, like a valiant soldier, and emerging triumphantly at last, threw a bar of dull red, like a pathway, across the sullen floor of the ocean. This reached from the shore, out over the water, far away, to end in the heavy shadows looming against the horizon like the walls of the City of Death, whose angel keeper was even now unbarring the gates for the call that should bring the soul of Joseph Devereux within their misty portals. Dwellers by the sea have a belief that the souls of those who are called, go ever with the turning of the tide. It was now only an hour, or less, to that; and Dorothy was waiting with a trembling heart for the ebb of the sea to carry her father away to the world of shadows. He lay motionless, as though his soul were already departed, save for that same heavy breathing. There was no change in this. It was as regular in its hoarse panting as the swinging of the pendulum in the clock outside the door,--the old clock that had seen both joy and sorrow passing before it through many generations, and had seemed to look with friendliness upon every eye--blue, black, gray, or brown--uplifted to its great face,--eyes that had long since been closed, some of them not even having time to grow dim with age or be moistened by tears of grief. "Gone--gone--going," it sighed in Dorothy's ears, until she covered them with her hands to shut out the sound, and with it the moaning of the surf. "Dot, my little girl!" A faint voice broke the stillness as the heavy breathing was hushed. She flew to the bedside and knelt there, while she pressed her warm mouth against the nerveless hand, whose chill seemed to strike her very heart. Her father felt the quivering of her lips, and tried to lift his other hand to her head.