Captain Stimpson, now grown somewhat stiff in his limbs, gave up his lookout in the cupola to Judith, and was at some expense to have it fitted up for her with cushions and curtains, and a spy-glass for her particular use. Her sleeping apartment opened directly at the foot of the stairs which led to it; and here with her books and her Eolian harp, she passed all the time which she felt to be exclusively her own. Her prospect was that of the harbor, opening into the ocean, under every aspect a noble one—with Baker’s island, and its light-house in the distance, on one side, and several hamlets at different distances on the other; the town, with its then few streets and scattered dwellings, and the level country beyond. The view offered little of the beautiful, the romantic or the picturesque; but all that was wanting its fair beholder’s imagination could supply; and it may be questioned whether a view of the bay of Naples even, with all its magnificence of scenery, could give rise to conceptions of more beauty in some minds, than were formed in Judith’s by the ordinary one of Salem harbor. Time went on, and it was now near the end of the summer preceding the November, when the cause was to come on at the Ipswich court. Letters had twice been received from Captain Fayerweather, but of a date prior to his leaving Europe, and arrivals were looked for every day, which were expected to bring answers to the information that had been dispatched to him of all which had occurred to his family since his departure. One fine evening, Judith, having finished all her domestic tasks for the day, below stairs, ascended to her observatory, thinking she should not be missed; her father having set out on his daily visit to the rope-walk—_en amateur_, for the captain had retired from business—her grandfather was quietly reposing in his chair, and her mother holding sweet communion with her dearly beloved Nanny Dennis—Mrs. Brayton. On reaching her airy retreat, the fair maiden took the spy-glass, and adjusting its tube, strained her vision over the ocean, hoping to espy the mast of some vessel coming into port. In vain—the curve of the wide horizon was unbroken even by a speck. A gentle sigh escaped her as she spoke; “Not yet; well, it must come before long.” She then took her book, and was soon luxuriating in the fairy-land of poetry. From time to time her eyes wandered from the page, to cast themselves over the expanse of waters before her, glowing beneath the sky of twilight, and scarcely dimpled by a breath of wind, as the tide still advanced to fill the broad basin, and broke in low ripples on its now brimming edge. Darkness at length came on, and being no longer able to distinguish its characters, she laid aside her book, and turned her eyes and thoughts to the scene without. Insensibly almost to herself, her ideas arranged themselves in measure, and she repeated in a low whisper: