To this plank a child was bound,--a little creature that might be three years old. At the sight of this form, and this helplessness, the heart of the woman seemed to break into sudden living flame. She carried the plank down to a level spot with an energy that would have made light of a burden even ten times as great; she stooped upon the sand; she unbound the body; and she thought, "The child is dead!" Nevertheless she took him in her arms; she dried his limbs with her apron; she wiped his face, and rubbed his hair;--but he gave no sign of life. Then she wrapped him in her shawl, and laid him in the boat, and rowed home. There was no one in the cabin when Clarice went in. When Dame Briton came home, she found her daughter with a ring upon her finger, bending over the body of a child that lay upon her bed. The dame was quickly brought into service, and there was no reason to fear that she would desist from her labors until she had received some evidence of death or life. She and Clarice worked all night over the body of the child, and towards morning were rewarded by the result. The boy's eyes opened, and he tried to speak. By noon of that day he was lying in the arms of Clarice, deathly pallor on his little face; but he could speak, and his pretty eyes were open. All those hours of mutual sympathy and striving, Dame Briton had been thinking to say, "Clarice, what's the ring for?" But she had not said it, when, in the afternoon, Bondo Emmins came into the cabin, and saw Clarice with a beautiful boy in her arms, wrapped in her shawl, while before the fire some rags of infant garments were drying. They talked over the boy's fortune and the night's work, the dame taking the chief conduct of the story; and Bondo was so much interested, and praised the child so much, and spoke with so much concern of the solitary, awful voyage the little one must have made, that, when he subsequently offered to take the child in his arms, Clarice let him go, and explained, when the young man began to talk to the boy, that he could not understand a word, neither could she make out the meaning of his speech. Emmins heard Clarice say that she must go to the Port the next day and learn what vessel had been lost, and if any passengers were saved; and by daybreak he set out on that errand. He returned early in the morning with the news that a merchantman, the "Gabriel," had gone down, and that cargo and crew were lost. While he was telling this to Clarice he observed the ring upon her finger, and he coupled the appearing of that token with the serenity of the girl's face, and hailed his conclusion as one who hoped everything from change and nothing from constancy.