The sun went down. The wind seemed to lull. Alice arose and put on her bonnet and shawl for a start. Old Diogenes buttoned his coat up to his chin, and took up his old felt hat to attend her. Miss Joe threw her check apron over her head to accompany them, and the little party opened the door and set out for the beach. The eyes of old Diogenes rolled “From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” in a great trouble! Though the sun had but just set, the sky was no longer blue, but of a lurid, metallic, coppery color, mottled over by leaden clouds, athwart which, and lower down, scudded huge, black, inky masses of vapor, driven wildly before the wind that had shifted and was again rising. Lower down and nearer the earth flew other clouds, flocks of wild sea fowl, screaming frightfully and dashing hither and thither, or settling upon the island as for shelter from the coming tempest. Such was the sky. The look of the sea was still more terrible. The surface of the water was very rough, the waves breaking into foam as though frost were thrown up from the depths of the sea. The whole enormous mass of waters was rising with a vast, slow, mighty swell, as though some monstrous under-power were laboring to upheave the ocean from its bed and shatter it into precipices and caverns. And all around the lurid horizon boomed the low, deep, awful sound of the coming storm. “It will never do to try to cross the water to-night, my dear child,” said Miss Joe, solemnly and fearfully. “We’re going to have an awful storm, and it may burst upon us at any minute.” “’Deed, Miss Ally, child, it’s wery unsafe—wery! Don’t let’s be a-tempting o’ Providence! Don’t!” said Diogenes, his teeth chattering with cold and terror. Just then the voice of the wind wailed across the waters like the shriek of a lost spirit, and the salt spray of the sea was dashed in their faces. The sky seemed to be settling down over the isle, and the waters, black, heavy, and dark! The mighty sea was heaving, settling, rising to meet the lowered sky! The vapor of the clouds and waves seemed intermingling! The rising wind howled and shrieked! “Well, child, if you venter upon the water this evening, you’ll row to the Kingdom of Heaven,” said Miss Joe. “Turn—hurry back! We must get to the house as fast as possible, or the storm will be upon us! Child, alive! what are you standing looking out to sea for? I do believe you are more afraid of braving General Garnet’s anger than that of the wind and sea themselves.” “I should not have come,” said Alice, turning shuddering, away from the beach. “Yes, you should!” replied Miss Joe; “and now you should come back! Hurry! hurry! hurry! Look at that mass of black cloud rushing like a demon up the sky!”