below they were annoyed with the hum and fretted with the sting of the mosquito. At last they parted, Talbot throwing himself upon the deck, and Mary retired to her berth and soon fell asleep. If the waking hours of that pure-minded girl had been those of endurance, the visions of that night were ample compensation. Reclined upon her narrow bed, with the folds of the mosquito-net tucked closely around her, while, like the Cossacks before Ismael, the multitudinous insects strove to enter, she was either in fancy communing with the man she loved, or with Frank and her father knelt beneath the cotton-tree which shaded the grave of her mother, and listened to the gentle wave as it rippled upon the beach, while from the jeweled sky, fit canopy, for such a scene, the Omniscient eye seemed to look down approving. Among the crew there was a dandy sailor who took especial pride in his flowing locks, and evidently sought to attract the notice of the lady passenger. The day before they reached Sisal, seizing an opportunity when Talbot and Gonzales were below, he passed once or twice by the place where she sat on deck, and at length catching her eye, with a meaning look dropped a letter at her feet, and immediately retired. Mary had been beset with so many dangers of late; had been so often nearly ensnared by plots, that she at once imagined the letter to contain a friendly warning. She therefore hastily picked it up and ran below. It proved to be a genuine love-letter, and despite her sadness and the anxiety of her position, she laughed outright as she read it. Her unusual merriment drew Talbot to her side, and after exacting a promise from him that he would in no manner notice, or betray a knowledge of its contents, she placed the letter in his hands, saying, “Don’t be jealous—I will be true, although the offer is a tempting one.” Verbatim et literatim, it ran thus: “dear Mary is a name so sweet,