“Mary is saved,” he cried, as he came up with them.

“From what?” inquired Wolston, anxiously.

“From the sea, that was about to swallow her up.”

“And by whom?”

“By Willis, myself, and us all.”

The same evening, the two families were again assembled at Falcon’s Nest, and thus, for a second time, the long talked-of expedition was brought to an abrupt conclusion.

“Ah,” said Willis, “we must cast anchor for a bit; yesterday it was the sky, to-day it was the sea, to-morrow it will be the land, perhaps—­the wind is clearly against us.”

How often does it not happen, in our pilgrimage through life, that we have the wind against us?  We make a resolute determination, we set out on our journey, but the object we seek recedes as we advance; it is no use going any farther—­the wind is against us.  We re-commence ten, twenty, a hundred times, but the result is invariably the same.  How is this?  No one can tell.  What are the obstacles?  It is difficult to say.  Perhaps, we meet with a friend who detains us; perhaps, a recollection that our memory has called, induces us to swerve from the path—­the blind man that sung under our window may have something to do with it—­perhaps, it was merely a fly, less than nothing.

It is not our minor undertakings, but rather our most important enterprises, that are frustrated by such trifles as these; for it must be allowed that we strive less tenaciously against an obstacle that debars us from a pleasure, than against one that separates us from a duty—­in the one case we have to stem the torrent, in the other we sail with the current.

When we observe some deplorable instance of a wrecked career—­when we see a man starting in life with the most brilliant prospects collapsing into a dead-weight on his fellows, we are apt to suppose that some insurmountable barrier must have crossed his path—­some Himalaya, or formidable wall, like that which does not now separate China from Tartary; but no such thing.  Trace the cause to its source, and what think you is invariably found?  A grain of sand; the unfortunate wretch has had the wind against him—­nothing more.

Rescued from the sea, Mary Wolston was now a prey to a raging fever.  Ill or well, at her age there is no medium, either exuberant health or complete prostration; the juices then are turbulent and the blood is ardent.

Somehow or other, a good action attaches the doer to the recipient; so, in the case of Fritz, apart from the brotherly affection which he had vaguely vowed to entertain for the two young girls that had so unexpectedly appeared amongst them, he now regarded the life of Mary as identical with his own, and felt that her death would inevitably shorten his own existence; “for,” said he to himself, “should she die, I was too late in drawing her out of the water.”  In his tribulation and irreflection, he drew no line between the present and the past,