While he was sitting thus, he was startled at the sound of a voice, deep, distinct, and sepulchral, which seemed to proceed from within the cottage.

“I see a book sealed with seven seals,” the voice was saying.  “Two of them are already broken, and when the third shall be broken—­then it is all black—­a great calamity will happen.”

“Pray don’t say that, Gurid,” prayed another voice, with a touching, child-like appeal in it (and he instantly recognized it as Elsie’s).  “God is so very strong, you know, and He can certainly wipe away that black spot, and make it all bright again.  And I don’t know that I have done anything very wrong of late; and father, I know, is really very good, too, even if he does say some hard things at times.  But he doesn’t mean anything by it—­and I am sure—­”

“Be silent, child!” interrupted the first voice.  “Thou dost not understand, and it is well for thee that thou dost not.  For it is written, ’He shall visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation.’”

“How terrible!”

“Hush!  Now I see a man—­he is tall and beautiful—­has dark hair and rather a dark face.”

“Pray don’t say anything more.  I don’t want to know.  Is he to break the seals?”

“Then there is water—­water—­a long, long journey.”

Maurice had listened to this conversation with feelings of mingled amusement and pity, very much as he would have listened to a duet, representing the usual mixture of gypsy and misguided innocence, in an old-fashioned opera.  That he was playing the eavesdropper had never entered his mind.  The scene seemed too utterly remote and unreal to come within the pale of moral canons.  But suddenly the aspect of affairs underwent a revolution, as if the misguided young lady in the opera had turned out to be his sister, and he himself under obligation to interfere in her behalf.  For at that moment there came an intense, hurried whisper, to which he would fain have closed his ears: 

“And does he care for me as I do for him?”

He sprang up, his ears tingling with shame, and hurried down the beach.  Presently it occurred to him, however, that it was not quite chivalrous in him to leave little Elsie there alone with the dark-minded sibyl.  Who knew but that she might need his help?  He paused, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard some one approaching, whom he instinctively knew to be Elsie.  As she came nearer, the moon, which hung transfixed upon the flaming spear of a glacier peak, revealed a distressed little face, through whose transparent surface you might watch the play of emotions within, as one watches the doings of tiny insects and fishes in an aquarium.

“What have they been doing to my little girl?” asked Fern, with a voice full of paternal tenderness.  “She has been crying, poor little thing.”