She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved man, or for the multitude of women bereft of such a husband.

By this time Captain Ben’s head was at the door.

“Morning!” said he, while his feet were coming up.  “Quite an accident down here below the lighthouse last night.  Schooner ran ashore in the blow and broke all up into kindling-wood in less than no time.  Captain Tisdale’s been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight.”

“I knowed it,” sighed Mrs. Davids.  “I heard a rushing sound sometime about the break of day that waked me out of a sound sleep, and I knowed then there was a spirit leaving its body.  I heard it the night Davids went, or I expect I did.  It must have been very nearly at that time.”

“Well, I guess it wasn’t a spirit, last night,” said Captain Ben; “for as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet blankets asleep behind the life-boat house.  He said he felt like he could shake them for staying out in the wet.  Wrecks always make for the lighthouse, so he s’posed those ones were drowned to death, sure enough.”

“Oh, then it couldn’t have been them, I was warned of!” returned Mrs. Davids, looking as though she regretted it.  “It was right over my head, and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past.  You haven’t heard, have you,” she continued, “whether or no there was any other damage done by the gale?”

“I don’t know whether you would call it damage exactly,” returned Captain Ben; “but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went home.  She said she couldn’t stay and run the chance of another of our coast blows, and off she trapsed.”

Mrs. Davids sighed like November.  “So you have some hard luck as well as myself.  I don’t suppose you can get a housekeeper to keep her long,” said she, dismally.

“Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I’m some of a mind to try that tack,” replied Captain Ben, smiling grimly.

Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and turned her eyes modestly out of the window.

“I am so.  But the difficulty is, who will it be?  There are so many to select from it is fairly bothersome,” continued Captain Ben, winking fast and looking as though he was made of dry corncobs and hay.

Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly.  “The land alive!” she ejaculated with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their shelves and Captain Ben in his chair.  “It makes me mad as a March hare to hear men go on as though all they’d got to do was to throw down their handkerchers to a woman, and, no matter who, she’d spring and run to pick it up.  It is always ‘Who will I marry?’ and not ’Who will marry me?’”

“Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers here at the P’int.  That was what was in my mind,” said Captain Ben, in a tone of meek apology.  “There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah Muchmore.  I don’t know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think every thing of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper.”