Agnes had carefully retained the life-preserver, which had been given to her by her friend the minister, and with the instinct of self-preservation, almost unconsciously clung to it, while her companions, less fortunate, and worn out with previous grief, one by one sank to rise no more "till the sea shall give up its dead." "I think," she said, as she concluded her narrative, "I must have been in the water more than half an hour, when I espied the sail, to which my unfortunate companion had alluded, and seeing it, seemed to inspire me with new life, for I had become so exhausted and enfeebled by the waves that surrounded me, that I felt nature could not much longer survive the icy chills which thrilled through my very frame; and when I found that you had seen me, and were sailing towards me, evidently with the intention of effecting my rescue, no language can describe the varied emotions of my heart,--joy, gratitude and hope preponderating." Exhausted by the effort of speaking, Agnes sank back on the rude couch, that the sailors had with kind haste prepared for her. "Land, yonder," sang one from the mast-head. "I am heartily glad of it," said the Captain, "for all our sakes, for we shall soon have a terrible storm, but especially for this poor lady's, whose strength seems almost gone." Prospered by a favoring breeze, a few hours sufficed to bear the vessel to its destined harbor; and that night, sheltered, in comparative comfort, beneath the hospitable roof of Mr. Williamson, Ellen's father, Agnes sank into deep and quiet repose. CHAPTER X. April, capricious, yet beautiful child of Spring, once more smiled upon the bleak shores and sterile plains which, when we last beheld them, were encompassed by the chilling atmosphere, and loomed bleak and desolate beneath the sombre sky of, to that land at least, unpropitious winter. Welcome to all the inhabitants of that rude coast, the return of the season was hailed with pleasure the deepest, the liveliest, with gratitude as warm as ever expanded the human heart, by her whom, an exile from her native shores, had been compelled to sojourn for a season on its rocky and cheerless wastes. Five months had now elapsed since, rescued by the kind-hearted sailors, Agnes had become an inmate of the fisherman's cottage, and these months had seemed to her like a separate existence, so widely had their experience differed from that of her accustomed every-day life.