A prisoner for the night in that dreary place, I felt as if I were a thousand miles from the abodes of civilization; and as one naturally does, amused myself by examining with intense curiosity the most indifferent object which served to remind me of more congenial places. I kept my eye long fixed on the lock of my fowling-piece, which had the word 'London,' and the maker's name engraved upon it; then looked in the bottom of my cap, and was peculiarly interested with the vignette which accompanied the manufacturer's name; and an old almanac seemed to link me with the literary world, although it was out of date by several years. The pictured little page, and calculations of eclipses which had come off, and gone into the musty record of by-gone events, the signs of the zodiac, the prophecies of wind and weather, the old maxim of 'early to bed and early to rise' and the way to make an apple-pudding, these had a fresh interest and a zest hardly to be equalled by Bulwer's last novel. I felt that there must be an 'imperfect sympathy' between Scollop Island and the great world of literature, art, and learning. But a deeper sense of satisfaction and security arose from the presence of woman. A fair face and a fragile form glanced occasionally across the apartment where we were seated, but retired, driven back by harsh words and vile language. It was the wife of Floys Boyo. She bore about her the marks of former beauty, although altered in all its lines by a prevailing expression of wo, but she still performed the duties of a wife with unflinching patience, though coarse and cruel treatment had long since rendered it a heartless task. Floys Boyo married her in the comparative innocence of his youth, before he had yet blunted all the kindly feelings of his nature. He had taken her from the abounding plenty of a farm-house, and from parents who loved her with the tenderness which falls to the lot of an only child. Afterward, as is always the case with a drunkard, he cherished her no longer with affection; dragged her about from one comfortless abode to another; and at last, on this desert place, cut her off from the last link which attached her to her friends. Still she adhered to him, when she might have returned to the bosom of her family; so hard is it to shake the fidelity which is a component part of a woman's nature, and so often in this world are the extremes of disposition linked together, the fierceness of the vulture with the enduring gentleness of the dove!