To Mr. Cory and Annie the sight was especially painful, for it brought vividly to their minds poor Hilton’s fate, and they could not help picturing the last scene of his life as an awful one. This only strengthened their determination to avenge his untimely end, and the sad conjectures with which the fast approaching wreck was greeted were mingled with a feeling of bitterness at the misery and suffering which were permitted to run riot upon the earth. “No,” said Annie, after a lengthened pause in the conversation, during which she seemed to have divined her father’s thoughts; “we mustn’t lose faith, after all. Please God, all will come right yet. Those scoundrels will be brought to book, and Harley will be proved innocent. Then we shall all be happy again.” “Meanwhile, though, Harley is suffering untold misery; Mrs. Riddell seems to be fretting herself into her grave; Hilton has met with a violent end; and Providence seems to be doing its best to help the cause of villainy.” “Yes, it is difficult to understand. But the cause of the wicked cannot always prosper, and the tangled skein of our destiny will unravel itself in time.” “So I suppose. We can only hope that the thread of our life doesn’t snap before then. One doesn’t like to feel as if one were so much the sport of fate, as to be like a mere cork on the ocean of life, tossed about with as little ceremony as--as--as that bottle.” Mr. Cory had found himself somewhat at a loss for a suitable simile, when his eyes fell on a bottle lightly tossing on the rippling water. “I suppose that bottle is carefully corked, or it would fill with water and sink,” observed Annie, contemplatively. “Yes, I should imagine it has papers in it,” said her father, “unless somebody has corked and sealed an empty bottle for a freak.” Both speakers knew of the practice of confiding news concerning sinking or endangered ships to papers sealed in bottles, and felt a subdued interest in the black little object bobbing about the water. How their interest would have been quickened could they have known how Hilton had employed his last night on board the “Merry Maid,” and could they have dreamed that this was perhaps the very bottle whose contents were intended to be instrumental in proving who was really guilty of the great diamond robbery, for the perpetration of which Harley was enduring penal servitude. But so it is. We often strive for the unattainable, and pass our greatest blessings by with indifference.