The tears that Mary Pratt profusely shed over Roswell's letter, were both sweet and bitter. The manifestations of his affection for her, which were manly and frank, brought tears of tenderness from her eyes; while the recollection of the width of the chasm that separated them, had the effect to embitter these proofs of love. Most females would have lost the sense of duty which sustained our heroine in this severe trial, and, in accepting the man of their heart, would have trusted to time, and her own influence, and the mercy of Divine Providence, to bring about the change she desired; but Mary Pratt could not thus blind herself to her own high obligations. The tie of husband and wife she rightly regarded as the most serious of all the obligations we can assume, and she could not--_would_ not plight her vows to any man whose 'God was not her God.' Still there was much of sweet consolation in this little-expected letter from Roswell. He wrote, as he always did, simply and naturally, and attempted no concealments. This was just as true of his acts, as the master of the schooner, as it was in his character of a suitor. To Mary he told the whole story of his weakness, acknowledging that a silly spirit of pride which would not permit him to seem to abandon a trial of the qualities of the two schooners, had induced him to stand on to the westward longer than he should otherwise have done, and the currents had come to assist in increasing the danger. As for Daggett, he supposed him to have been similarly influenced; though he did not withhold his expressions of gratitude for the generous manner in which that seaman had stuck to him to the last.