In a second the letter was gone. A savage wind broke loose with a tiger roar from the sea. The billows, in swift rage and with frightful tumult, piled up their fierce scrolls in a chaos of towering surge. Mist and spray and foam whirled in a blinding froth to the sky. Old Steve, half-carrying, half-dragging—for the girl seemed hardly able to take a step unassisted—drew Hannah back into the one long low building by the wharf, where most of the people that were standing about a few moments before had taken shelter from the storm. Quickly half a dozen rough hands drew out a small packing-box and placed it for a seat, and some one threw a woolen shawl around her shoulders. She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with the terror of their strength. And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea! It was horrible. The awful words rang constantly in her ears. They repeated themselves over and over. Where, how—she knew naught, only the one sentence, with its dreadful import. After that she had read nothing, and before it she forgot all. Rocking a little back and forth on her seat, she sat there pale and dumb. Like her mother, two-and-twenty years in the past, she asked no sympathy, she heeded no comment. The ashen clouds, racing before the wind like the scud of the sea, drove swiftly down behind the hills, and the blinding fury of the storm had spent itself. Drearily the gray sky let down again its endless drizzle, when Stephen, his honest voice painfully choked by emotion, prevailed upon her to go home. At first looking at him blankly, she seemed hardly to comprehend what he said, and it was only when he spoke of her mother that she gave any heed to his entreaty. Her mother! how could she tell her the terrible news, her patient, waiting mother! Old Stephen, many times after, used to say how in that moment, when she looked at him, he wished he had been dead before ever he brought her such a letter. Shivering, always shivering, she drew the shawl tight about her shoulders, and slipped down off the fishy box without a word. The old sailor in his anxious care would have followed too, but she only shook her head, and without having opened her lips, he saw her go alone.