“Is there no one belonging to you? it seems too—” “Too dreadful,” the preacher would have said, but something seemed to hold back the words. Perhaps it was the perfect quiet in the two faces. “Of course I miss Giles, all the time,” Isla went on, presently. “But he was so tired, poor dear, that he could not stay any longer.” “And your mother?” said the preacher, with some reproach in her tone. “Do you not miss your mother?” “Jacob did!” said Isla. “Or he would have, at first, if I had let him. But mother,—oh, you could not have kept her. She hated it so, after Giles was gone, she had to go, too. No, we are much better off without mother; she could not bear me after Giles went, and hardly she could bear Jacob; and she tried so hard to die, I was glad when she could. She was dumb, too, you know, and now she isn’t, I suppose.” This was strange talk. The preacher felt that she should reprove and exhort, but still the girl’s face silenced her. “Tell me, Isla,” she said, after a silence, “what did you mean, when you said, a little while ago, that I had said some things that were not true. You did not mean that, I am sure.” Isla reflected. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, surely I meant it. You spoke of Him,”—she nodded upward with her curious reverent gesture,—“you said He was our Father; I liked that. Giles knew a little, but he did not know that much, then. Now I suppose he does. But then you said that if we did things,—I don’t remember what things,—that He would be angry with us always, and never love us any more, and that we should be punished all the time, forever. And that could not be true, because it is nonsense.” The preacher was startled, and spoke sharply. “You are not speaking in a proper manner!” she said. “What right have you to speak so to me?” “You asked me!” said Isla. “What did you want me to say?” They were both silent for a time. “Why do you think this?” said the preacher then. “What can you know about these things, living here with no teaching and no light save that of your own heart, which is sinful?” Isla laughed. “I had a father!” she said. “Do you suppose that Great One needed Giles to tell Him how to treat His children?” “What can I know?” she repeated. “I know what the sea tells me all day, all my life; and what the clouds tell me, and the birds; but most of all I know what my little Jacob tells me. Look at him! Is he sinful? If you say that, then I see that you do not know. But my sea knows, and it tells me, all day long. All day long!” the girl repeated; and her eyes grew soft and dreamy as she gazed out over the blue, white-tossing water. The preacher would have answered, for she was shocked and pained at this unseemly talk; but suddenly some words came to her mind, and silenced her. “Deep answereth unto deep—”