it in his neckcloth, bore it to the nearest house.  There, when washed, and dressed in a child’s frock, found in Margaret’s trunk, it was laid upon a bed; and as the rescued seamen gathered round their late playfellow and pet, there were few dry eyes in the circle.  Several of them mourned for Nino, as if he had been their own; and even the callous wreckers were softened, for the moment, by a sight so full of pathetic beauty.  The next day, borne upon their shoulders in a chest, which one of the sailors gave for a coffin, it was buried in a hollow among the sand heaps.  As I stood beside the lonely little mound, it seemed that never was seen a more affecting type of orphanage.  Around, wiry and stiff, were scanty spires of beach-grass; near by, dwarf-cedars, blown flat by wintry winds, stood like grim guardians; only at the grave-head a stunted wild-rose, wilted and scraggy, was struggling for existence.  Thoughts came of the desolate childhood of many a little one in this hard world; and there was joy in the assurance, that Angelo was neither motherless nor fatherless, and that Margaret and her husband were not childless in that New World, which so suddenly they had entered together.

    “To-morrow, Margaret’s mother, sister, and brothers will
    remove Nino’s body to New England.”

* * * * *

Was this, then, thy welcome home?  A howling hurricane, the pitiless sea, wreck on a sand-bar, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates, and not one friend!  In those twelve hours of agony, did the last scene appear but as the fitting close for a life of storms, where no safe haven was ever in reach; where thy richest treasures were so often stranded; where even the dearest and nearest seemed always too far off, or just too late, to help.

Ah, no! not so.  The clouds were gloomy on the waters, truly; but their tops were golden in the sun.  It was in the Father’s House that welcome awaited thee.

  “Glory to God! to God! he saith,
  Knowledge by suffering entereth,
  And Life is perfected by Death.”

[Footnote A:  The following account is as accurate, even in minute details, as conversation with several of the survivors enabled me to make it.—­W.H.C.]

[Footnote B:  Mrs. Hasty’s own words while describing the incident.]

[Footnote C:  The letters from which extracts were quoted in the previous chapter.]