commander might soon be wanted on board his vessel. Annie Deer retired to her chamber immediately afterward. She retired not to repose, however, but, on the contrary, to pay for the happiness which she had that night experienced by many a tear. She prayed, too, and prayed fervently, not without hope in the efficacy of prayer, but with that trembling timidity, that doubt of our own worthiness, under the weight of which the footsteps of the apostle, though miraculously upheld, sunk through the surface of the yielding waters. All remained calm; and, towards eleven o'clock, she remarked the clouds passing over the moon, taking a different direction from that which they had done in the morning: and she thought, with mixed hope and apprehension, that, ere the morning, perhaps, he whom she loved might be far away upon that voyage, which was destined either to give them comfort and independence, or to separate them for ever. She lay down to rest; but, towards twelve o'clock, the wind began to rise, increased in violence every moment, and swelled at length into a hurricane. The casements rattled; the wainscot shook and creaked; the house itself seemed shaken. Loudly roaring round and round, the spirit of the storm appeared clamouring at the gates for admittance. It could be heard as it whistled through the branches of the trees. It could be distinguished as it rushed and raved amid the ruins of the castle up above. It could be felt as it swept, with sighing and a melancholy sound, over the level sands of the bay, interrupted only by the sudden plunge of the waves, as they poured headlong upon the resounding shore. Annie Deer rose from her bed, and listened, and wept, and prayed through the livelong night.