“No more, good friend,” said he. “But I will have a taste of this life perilous. And now where is it that I go?” Dan also stood up. “My little woman,” said he, glancing at Faith, “thinks there’s a corner for you, sir.” “I beg your pardon——” And Mr. Gabriel paused, with a shadow skimming over his clear dark face. Dan wondered what he was begging pardon for, but thought perhaps he hadn’t heard him, so he repeated,—— “My wife,”——nodding over his shoulder at Faith, “she’s my wife,——thinks there’s a——” “She’s your wife?” said Mr. Gabriel, his eyes opening and brightening the way an aurora runs up the sky, and looking first at one and then at the other, as if he couldn’t understand how so delicate a flower grew on so thorny a stem. The red flushed up Dan’s face,——and up mine, too, for the matter of that,——but in a minute the stranger had dropped his glance. “And why did you not tell me,” he said, “that I might have found her less beautiful?” Then he raised his shoulders, gave her a saucy bow, with his hand on Dan’s arm,——Dan, who was now too well pleased at having Faith made happy by a compliment to sift it,——and they went out. But I was angry enough; and you may imagine I wasn’t much soothed by seeing Faith, who’d been so die-away all the evening, sitting up before my scrap of looking-glass, trying in my old coral ear-rings, bowing up my ribbons, and plaiting and prinking till the clock frightened her into bed. The next morning, mother, who wasn’t used to such disturbance, was ill, and I was kept pretty busy tending on her for two or three days. Faith had insisted on going home the first thing after breakfast, and in that time I heard no more of anybody,——for father was out with the night-tides, and, except to ask how mother did, and if I’d seen the stray from the Lobblelyese again, was too tired for talking when he came back. That had been——let me see——on a Monday, I think,——yes, on a Monday; and Thursday evening, as in-doors had begun to tell on me, and mother was so much improved, I thought I’d run out for a walk along the sea-wall. The sunset was creeping round everything, and lying in great sheets on the broad, still river, the children were frolicking in the water, and all was so gay, and the air was so sweet, that I went lingering along farther than I’d meant, and by and by who should I see but a couple sauntering toward me at my own gait, and one of them was Faith. She had on a muslin with little roses blushing all over it, and she floated along in it as if she were in a pink cloud, and she’d snatched a vine of the tender young woodbine as she went, and, throwing it round her shoulders, held the two ends in one hand like a ribbon, while with the other she swung her white sunbonnet. She laughed, and shook her head at me, and there, large as life, under the dark braids dangled my coral ear-rings, that she’d adopted without leave or license. She’d been down to the lower landing to