“I—I wish it was back now! I don’t know what’s upset me so—There, kiss her, Luke, and let’s be off, quick, or I’ll disgrace myself outright, before I know it!” and Tom, gulping down great quantities of air with all his might, got up from the stone hurriedly, as if he meditated making a sudden bolt. But he did not. He stood there quietly looking out at sea; and when, a moment after, the young captain, taking his arm, said, “Come, now I am ready,” he started as from a dream. Turning to his sister, with every trace of his rollicking manner lost, he said, as though he had not spoken of her before,— “You must take good care of mother—poor mother. Do not let her grieve while I am gone. Oh, Hannah, you will be very careful of her, and not allow any thing—not allow her to get tired, and tell her always, while she waits, that when I am with her again, I will never leave her.” Then they had passed through the gate and were going rapidly down the narrow foot-path to the bottom of the hill. Hannah strained her eyes after them, and when at the turn of the road both brother and lover were lost to view, still she lingered at the spot pondering over Tom’s unwonted emotion. It was not like him. Never before had she seen him so singularly affected, and now that he was gone, it came back to her with redoubled intensity. The unusual sorrow that had almost choked him, the strange tone in his voice that he had tried vainly to conceal, the sudden wish that the Nereid was back even now, his repeated charges about their mother, all troubled her. An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight and still, covered on one side with a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but this time she started violently and shivered. It seemed as if the summer night had suddenly grown cold and chilled her to the heart, and with hurried steps she ran back to the house.