“Next day the good ship Chirpland came off Port Penn.  The jolly captain saying adieu to Minuit, clasped his hand.

“‘I saw thy look and my daughter’s yesterday,’ he said.  ’It is weak of me to deny her a man like thee, thou sailor’s friend.  My ship is old.  These coasts are dangerous.  Nights and days come when we get no sight of lights ashore or in heaven.  If thy chronometer fail, fail not thou, but be to her repairer and possessor!’

“The discovery and the trust embarrassed Minuit, but he had never denied the request of any man.  His time, as his sign affirmed, was everybody’s.  Yet a thrill, a twang, a twinge of delicious fear passed through him now.  He loved this girl dearly, but he feared to love at all.  He had now both the parental and the womanly recognition, and his days were lonely even with his garrulous timepieces, but he felt a lonelier sense of the possibility of turning her affection to awe.  Those queer legends of his birth, his affinity for fixed luminaries and motions, and his conscious knowledge that he stood in some way related to spheres and orbits, and the laws of revolution and period, had never disturbed his mind in its calculations.  But if he did stand exceptional in these respects to his fellow-men, might another and a beloved one comprehend what he himself did not?  Yet the kindly regard of his neighbors, the composure of a conscience well consulted, and the hope that he was worthy of human love, made him resolve to keep the captain’s admonition, though he hoped the occasion to obey it might never arrive.

“In the absence of the good ship, however, love could not be deceived.  It spoke in waitings and longings, and in tender glances and considerateness.  She knew the rattle of his carriage-wheels, and he could feel her in the air like the breath of a beautiful day soon to appear in distance.  Time, toward which he stood in such natural harmony, was dearer that it contained this passion and life more exquisite, and himself more questionable for it all.

“It was a stormy winter.  Ships strewed the coast between Hatteras and Navesink, and the capes of the Delaware received many a tattered barque.  The ice poured down and wedged itself between Reedy Island and the shores, and crushed to pieces many that had escaped the ocean gales.  One night in a raging storm the door of Captain Lum’s cabin was thrown open, and a sailor appeared fresh from the water.  He bore in his hand a chronometer, which Minuit recognized in a moment, and he drew his arm for the first time around the maiden’s form.

“’The Chirpland went down on Five Fathom Shoal, and the captain stood by her.  He bade us return his chronometer, and say that he perished in the assurance that his daughter was left to the guidance of another fully as sure.’

“‘My child,’ said Minuit, ’I accept thee wholly, sharing thy griefs!  Weep, but on the breast of one who loves thee!’

“The village of Christina rejoiced when its broad-faced, dimpled friend came home with a bride so fair and well-descended.  They dressed the sign before his door with flowers.  Only the groom wore an anxious face as he led her into his tidy home, now for the first time blessed with a mistress.