freshening gale was rolling up the waves against the advancing tide, and upon the darkening sky where clouds were piled like ink-hued mountains from horizon to zenith, and upon the distant sail of a wave-tossed packet that gleamed like a snow-flake on the black bosom of the water an instant, and then, like a snow-flake, would melt and disappear in the rise of an intervening wave. “God! if Raymond should be in that bark!” she cried, as her falcon glance descried it. Seizing her small telescope (one of her toys when a child, one of her jewels when a woman), she levelled it at the distant bark. She gazed eagerly. On struggled the frail vessel between wind and wave, tacking from side to side, now driven forward by the gale, now thrown back by the tide. She gazed anxiously. The thunder muttered in the distance. The gale quickened, and now stronger than the tide, drove on the fragile bark before it, reeling and pitching like a drunken man. She left the window and the room, and hurrying down stairs, hastened from the house, fled to the promontory, and stood upon the extreme point of the peak gazing out upon the waters. The sky was black as night. The bosom of the bay heaved like a strong heart in a strong agony. On came the vessel bounding and rebounding before the wind, until it was brought up suddenly by the strong current of the waves that whirled around the point of the promontory; and then it heaved and tossed between leaping and flashing waters and buffeting winds! There on that maelstrom it heaved and set like a guilty wish in an ardent soul, driven on by the gale of passion and opposed by the tide of conscience, and nearly wrecked between them. There it heaved and set, vainly struggling to round the promontory, and enter the harbor of Churchill’s Point. There it rolled and writhed and groaned; now raised by a towering wave, now thrown down a yawning ocean cavern, while the lightning glared, and the thunder breaking overhead rolled rumbling down the abyss of distance! Upon the extreme point of the peak, like the spirit of the storm, stood Hagar, her hair and raiment flying in the gale around her, her eyes fixed upon the writhing vessel. Suddenly with a sharp cry, scarce touching with her light foot the points of the crags that served her for steps, she sped down the dizzy precipice; she had recognised Raymond, just at the moment when the slight vessel, lifted by an uprearing giant wave, was pitched upon the rocks at the base of the promontory! Shot from the deck into the air by the sudden concussion, three or four men dropped into the sea at the distance. Hagar’s eyes with a rapid glance traversed the bosom of the waters. She saw one or two sturdy sailors rise, buffeting the waves and struggling to reach the shore. But she saw not Raymond, though with pausing brain, breathless lungs, and bursting heart, she watched the surface of the now subsiding waters. At last at some distance up the coast she saw him rise,