“I sleep in a cave!” exclaimed Mrs. Le Brocq. “I cannot do any such thing. I never slept in a cave in my life.” “If you see any place that you like better, I am sure I am very glad,” replied Stephen. “Yonder sofa would not be a bad place on a soft summer’s night. Only, a brood of Mother Carey’s chickens might chance to flap their wings about you and startle you; or, if you woke, you might happen to find yourself in the middle of a circle of strangers, all smoking their pipes; and then you might wish yourself down with me in the cave. If you look round, ma’am, you will see no blue roofs in all the island,—unless they have altered it since I knew it.” Mrs. Le Brocq shuddered as she said that it was too dark to see blue roofs or any thing else. “And there are the Casket lights,” cried Anna. “Only two! yes; there is the third. Look, mother! like three red stars.” “Now,” said Stephen, “one of you must be so good as to help me down this path,—just to the turning.” Anna guided him, her mother calling out all the way, that they must not go far: she did not choose to be left alone. While they were for a few minutes out of sight, she had recourse to her prayers, finding herself in too strong a panic for tears. Those nasty birds would come and pick out first her eyes and then Anna’s; and then they two would be more blind than Stephen, and could never get away; and their bones would lie stark and stiff on the cold ground. Before she had done praying that she might live to die in her bed, her companions re-appeared, to save her eyes for the present from the birds. When Stephen and Anna had reached the first turn of the winding path, he desired to know what was to be seen beneath. “Scarcely anything,” replied Anna. “Between the Casket lights and these rocks, there is nothing but the dark grey sea.” “And nothing under these rocks?” “Only a little patch of sand, with nothing upon it; and the white birds sailing out and in. Not a boat on the sea, nor a living person on the land! What a place to bring us to, Stephen!” “Not a living person on the land! Do you suppose there are any dead, Miss Anna? Do you see any white skeletons among the dark rocks?” “The place gives one as horrible an idea as any you can speak,” Anna replied. “This is a place where a poor wretch may be cast ashore, and drag himself up out of sea-reach, and mark the sun set thrice while he is pining with hunger and cannot die, and beholding land far off where he cannot make himself seen or heard, till all is one dark cloud before his dying eyes, and his last terrors seize him, and there is no one to take his hand, and speak the word that would calm his spirit. O, Stephen, what a place to bring my mother and me to!” “Ay, is not it? You are making up your mind to die here, I see. Come; this is all I have to show you yet. We may go up to the sofa again, and see whether your mother is dreaming about dead men’s bones, or crying because she cannot get away.”