"Sally," said Moses, "do you know I am tired of wandering? I am coming home now. I begin to want a home of my own." This he said as they sat together on the rustic seat and looked off on the blue sea. "Yes, you must," said Sally. "How lovely that ship looks, just coming in there." "Yes, they are beautiful," said Moses abstractedly; and Sally rattled on about the difference between sloops and brigs; seeming determined that there should be no silence, such as often comes in ominous gaps between two friends who have long been separated, and have each many things to say with which the other is not familiar. "Sally!" said Moses, breaking in with a deep voice on one of these monologues. "Do you remember some presumptuous things I once said to you, in this place?" Sally did not answer, and there was a dead silence in which they could hear the tide gently dashing on the weedy rocks. "You and I are neither of us what we were then, Sally," said Moses. "We are as different as if we were each another person. We have been trained in another life,--educated by a great sorrow,--is it not so?" "I know it," said Sally. "And why should we two, who have a world of thoughts and memories which no one can understand but the other,--why should we, each of us, go on alone? If we must, why then, Sally, I must leave you, and I must write and receive no more letters, for I have found that you are becoming so wholly necessary to me, that if any other should claim you, I could not feel as I ought. Must I go?" Sally's answer is not on record; but one infers what it was from the fact that they sat there very late, and before they knew it, the tide rose up and shut them in, and the moon rose up in full glory out of the water, and still they sat and talked, leaning on each other, till a cracked, feeble voice called down through the pine-trees above, like a hoarse old cricket,-- "Children, be you there?" "Yes, father," said Sally, blushing and conscious. "Yes, all right," said the deep bass of Moses. "I'll bring her back when I've done with her, Captain." "Wal',--wal'; I was gettin' consarned; but I see I don't need to. I hope you won't get no colds nor nothin'." They did not; but in the course of a month there was a wedding at the brown house of the old Captain, which everybody in the parish was glad of, and was voted without dissent to be just the thing. Miss Roxy, grimly approbative, presided over the preparations, and all the characters of our story appeared, and more, having on their wedding-garments. Nor was the wedding less joyful, that all felt the presence of a heavenly guest, silent and loving, seeing and blessing all, whose voice seemed to say in every heart,-- "He turneth the shadow of death into morning." End of Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe