The tide still rose quietly, and murmured softly on the stones. A beach bird ran by, and did not fear to brush the child with its wing, he was so still, and looked so gentle. A sea-gull came wheeling in over the beach; hovered a moment on broad wings, then vanished, a white ghost in the deepening gray. The fire smouldered, the brands fell away into soft, gray heaps with a red coal at the centre; and still the child slept, though now the air grew thin and cold, and a fog began to creep in from the sea. Now was it a thing of his dreams, or was there a flutter of broader wings over the lonely shore? Were they real, the two figures that stood dimly lovely in the waning light? Surely they were speaking— “See! he is sleeping, how soundly! He should be mine, not yours. He hears now; he speaks now; and I will but loose him from the little dumb thing that was the prison of him, and he shall hear and speak always, forevermore. If I lay my hand on him, it will be only a touch, and not so cold, only a soft coolness; and then! oh, the waking for him! Why would you keep him from me? for it is to me that the word should come.” And the other, the flame-winged spirit, could not answer; could only keep her own warm hand on the child’s heart, and breathe on him with her warm breath, and wait and listen in anguish, lest the word should indeed come to her brother and not to her. And if the word should come a moment late, and she had lost the faint flutter of the little heart? But how strange for the angel not to know, that there is no “too late!” Hark! what sound is that? A moment ago,—unless those shadowy forms were real indeed,—there was only silence and the falling night, and the child asleep on the shingle. But now, though no voice is heard—for who should cry aloud to the deaf child?—yet the air is full of sound; it palpitates with motion. The light shock of pebbles falling beneath hurrying feet, the patter of those feet, hardly touching the sand as they flit past; then round the point a figure flying, swift and silent, with outstretched arms and hair streaming loose. Isla! Isla is coming! Go thy way, good brother Death! not yet the child needs thee; not yet is he to take thy kind, cold hand and go with thee. And thou, flame-winged spirit, fold him yet closer in thy warm arms, for the night falls chill. Isla dropped on the beach and clasped the boy to her heart. The little limbs were cold, but the breath came warm on her cheek, as she pressed him close, and kissed and patted him. She dropped the orange beside him. It was this that had made her late; going for it on board a vessel where she heard the fruit might be had, and detained by the churlish skipper, till night began to fall, while she was still at the further end of the island. Would the child wake to see it?