which had but been begun as in somnambulism.  Day after day, week after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive edged every eager glance.  With equal longing she now looked for the living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never to return.  Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such emotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendar or dial.  As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealed forth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds those poisonous nights.  All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, or humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid trance—­the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded it, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least loved voice she could have heard.

No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship, and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her soul, that at length she desperately said, “Not yet, not yet; my foolish heart runs on too fast.”  So she forced patience for some further weeks.  But to those whom earth’s sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long it was since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same precision, how long a space remained to pass.  But this proved impossible.  What present day or month it was she could not say.  Time was her labyrinth, in which Hunilla was entirely lost.

And now follows—­

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here.  One knows not whether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy to certain things.  At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon such.  If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men?  Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events.  Events, not books, should be forbid.  But in all things man sows upon the wind, which bloweth just there whither it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know.  Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla—­

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden lizard ere she devour.  More terrible, to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad.  Unwittingly I imp this cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if he feel not he reads in vain.

—­“The ship sails this day, to-day,” at last said Hunilla to herself; “this gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad.  In loose ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will but wait.  Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings.  Holy Virgin, aid me!  Thou wilt waft back the ship.  Oh, past length of weary weeks—­all to be dragged over—­to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely give ye, though I tear ye from me!”