The dame was quickly brought into service, and there was no reason to fear that she would desist from her labors until she had received some evidence of death or life.  She and Clarice worked all night over the body of the child, and towards morning were rewarded by the result.  The boy’s eyes opened, and he tried to speak.  By noon of that day he was lying in the arms of Clarice, deathly pallor on his little face; but he could speak, and his pretty eyes were open.

All those hours of mutual sympathy and striving, Dame Briton had been thinking to say, “Clarice, what’s the ring for?” But she had not said it, when, in the afternoon, Bondo Emmins came into the cabin, and saw Clarice with a beautiful boy in her arms, wrapped in her shawl, while before the fire some rags of infant garments were drying.

They talked over the boy’s fortune and the night’s work, the dame taking the chief conduct of the story; and Bondo was so much interested, and praised the child so much, and spoke with so much concern of the solitary, awful voyage the little one must have made, that, when he subsequently offered to take the child in his arms, Clarice let him go, and explained, when the young man began to talk to the boy, that he could not understand a word, neither could she make out the meaning of his speech.

Emmins heard Clarice say that she must go to the Port the next day and learn what vessel had been lost, and if any passengers were saved; and by daybreak he set out on that errand.  He returned early in the morning with the news that a merchantman, the “Gabriel,” had gone down, and that cargo and crew were lost.  While he was telling this to Clarice he observed the ring upon her finger, and he coupled the appearing of that token with the serenity of the girl’s face, and hailed his conclusion as one who hoped everything from change and nothing from constancy.

Clarice had found the boy in the place where she had looked for Luke that night when his cap was washed to her feet.  Over and over again she had said this to her father and mother while they busied themselves about the unconscious child; now she said it again to Bondo Emmins, as if there were some special significance in the fact, as indeed to her there was.  He was her child, and he should be her care, and she would call him Gabriel.

People could understand the burden imposed upon the laborious life of Clarice by this new, strange care.  But they did not see the exceeding great reward, nor how the love that lingered about a mere memory seemed blessed to the poor girl with a blessing of divine significance.

To make the child her own by some special act that should establish her right became the wish of Clarice.  It was not enough for her that she should toil for him while others slept, that she should stint herself in order to clothe him in a becoming manner, that she should suffer anxiety for him in the manifold forms best known to those who have endured it.  She had given herself to Luke, so that she feared no more from any man’s solicitation.  She would fain assert her claim to this young life which Providence had given her.  But this desire was suggested by external influence, as her marriage covenant had been.