of the sky, the ships and coasters felt no serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island.  There, clustering about as thickly in that olden time as they now seek from all the ocean round the costly shelter of Henlopen breakwater, coaster and pirate, fisherman and slaver, sent up the prayer a beneficent government has since granted in the fullest measure, for a perfect Coast Survey and a vigilant Lighthouse Board.

“The daughter of Captain Lum was named Lois, and she was the junior of Fithian Minuit by several years, a slender, beautiful girl, with hair and eyes of the softest brown, and household ways, daughterly and endearing.

“The old sea-captain, who made five voyages a year to the nearer Indies, and sent ashore to Port Penn as he passed, returning, the best of rum and the freshest of tropical fruits, looked with a jealous eye upon any possible suitor to his daughter, and had, perhaps, embarrassed her prospects for a younger protector, if such she had ever wished.  But he loved to see the clock-maker come to the cottage, who had never shown partiality for any woman, while popular with all.

“‘Minuit,’ he used to say, ’the best man on watch by land or sea, thou North Star; look to my girl as to my chronometer, and I’ll pay thee twice the cost of thy time!’

“It was the captain’s delight, while ashore, to have every timepiece, stationary or portable, taken apart in the presence of his daughter and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready to serve his punch, or pass to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the pieces of mechanism:  brass gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and springs, ship-glasses, compasses, the manifold parts of little things by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a human watch and the crystal shell of the embossed heaven.  Chronometers were with Minuit attractive and yet awe-giving subjects.  The legend of his childhood, well forgotten by all else, said that he had swallowed a chronometer, so small that a sea-captain could swim with it in his mouth.  And now the sailors of all the navies cruised by the aid of clumsy watches, big as house-clocks, which to look at made Minuit smile with pity.

“‘Captain Lum,’ he said aloud, on the eve of a voyage in the winter season, ’I have often yearned to go to sea.  The sight of it makes me a little wild.  I think I could guess my way over it and about it, by inherent reckoning.’

“He saw the pair of white hands holding something before him tremble a little, and he looked up.  The spiritual face of Lois was looking at his with wistful apprehension and interest.  If ever his pulse beat out of time it was now—­for in that exchange of glances he felt what she did not understand—­that he was beloved.

“Pain and joy, not swiftly, but softly, filled Minuit—­pain, because he had loved this girl and wished never to have her know it, but would keep it an unbreathed, a holy mystery; and joy, like any lover’s recognizing himself in the dear heart he had never importuned.