Many days, many nights, many weeks, many months, Miriam had watched the sea with wistful eyes. For his sake she had very nearly grown to love it, and the color came again to her cheeks as the time went by and the year was almost up, when it would give back forever the one she valued more than life. In those days she scanned the water-line, and waited patiently, and went about the house singing. She chattered to her baby-daughter all how its father was sailing home, until it laughed and cooed in wild delight. Every morning she dressed little Tommy in his best, and tied about his waist the beautiful sea-green sash that Jacob had brought her from the distant Indies; and in the queer frosted vases on the mantel, that had come from some foreign port, she kept a fresh bouquet of sweet wild flowers. But poor Jacob never came back. Homeward bound, his vessel was wrecked off the treacherous Newfoundland shore. A storm drove her helpless, enshrouded in fog, against the rocks where she foundered, and captain and crew went down together. Only two men escaped from the terrible disaster. When the dreadful news came and they told Miriam as they met her on the porch, she made no reply. She did not moan or scream. She only looked out for a moment at the deceitful sea, smiling in its sheen of a thousand tints, then turned and went into the house and shut the door. She had always been a strange woman, and they left her to bear her grief alone. She asked nobody’s sympathy, she did not complain, she never spoke of Jacob. She did not, as the people had expected, sell her house. She made no change so far as the world could see, only that she held herself, if possible, more aloof from society than ever. But before three months had gone by they noticed that her brown and shining hair had turned white, and her gray eyes showed half concealed within their depths an unfathomed trouble. Then too, her figure, once erect and straight as a dart, grew bent and stooped across the shoulders, and nothing ever brought the color to her face any more that was always pale and thin. Otherwise, however, there appeared no difference. She lived economically, and sometimes took in a small amount of fine sewing, as, beside the house, she had little else, for the sea when it buried her husband had buried his earnings also in the same watery grave. She staid at home and watched the children in whom her life was now wholly bound up. They were her world, her all. She seemed to find in them her very existence, and after the queer frosted vases on the mantel had stood empty for years, their young hands filled them again with sweet wild flowers. So the house once more was bright and sunny, and, though Miriam herself never sang, Hannah’s voice was clear and happy.