O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn! O requiem of the dying day! O Bells of Lynn! From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn! Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight, O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn! The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland, Listens, and leisurely rows ashore, O Bells of Lynn! Over the shining sands the wandering cattle homeward Follow each other at your call, O Bells of Lynn! The distant lighthouse hears, and with his flaming signal Answers you, passing the watchword on, O Bells of Lynn! And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous surges, And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of Lynn! Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incantations, Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn! And startled at the sight, like the weird woman of Endor, Ye cry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn! THE HIGH TIDE OF DECEMBER. Breakfast was ready. Captain Lufflin, who, like most retired old salts, had a healthy stomach, and humored it, crossed and uncrossed his stumpy little legs, and pulled his gray moustache complacently, when he caught the first sniff of the hot coffee and broiling beefsteak. He had been down on the foggy beach, (for the high winter tides were worth watching on that lonely coast,) and was now quietly drying his feet before the crackling wood-fire in the dining-room grate; but even Ann, (the clam-digger's daughter, promoted to cook,) as she bustled in and out, had seen the Captain was out of temper, as he waited, frowning portentously, and wagging his bald head now and then as if a wasp stung it. Lufflin, who aboard ship would have risked a thousand lives on his own cool judgment, had been uneasy and irritable for two months back, ever since Mrs. Jacobus had written to him about buying this house for her. "It was to be a Christmas gift from her to her husband," she wrote. "She wanted it, therefore, kept a secret from him. Any quiet corner along the coast which they could make into a home." Adding something about M. Jacobus "being fagged out with work, and needing rest," at which Lufflin shook his head. The Captain knew, that, bookworm and picture-maniac though he might be, Jacobus had managed to squander, in some unaccountable way, his own and his wife's fortune. So much of their history had got back to the fishing-town where she had lived when a child. People even hinted that they had been almost starving latterly in New York. However that might be, Old Lufflin knew that the sum she remitted to him was the last they had left; and beyond this, he had a shrewd suspicion that in the shipwreck the Jacobuses had made of life, something of more worth than money had been lost, and that this home she talked of was most probably a last effort to bury some shameful secret.