every Sunday, appeared to her in her dreams as wearing some indistinct sea shape, as treading lightly on the waves and beckoning her to come to that new and delightful region. The thought was too precious to be spoken of to her father, and the girl cherished it till she half persuaded herself that something more than fancy had shaped the image. For months she turned the wish over and over till it grew into a project. The notion of some unaccountable good to be derived from looking on the sea-of some magical beauty clothing the great element and of some mystery connected with the moment of her success in the enterprise, fastened on her imagination with no less strength than would on many minds the hope of mounting from earth to one of the heavenly bodies. The plan however seemed almost impracticable, Her father was growing old, a little peevish at any opposition to his will, and more and more settled in his daily round of habits. He was impatient at his daughter's absence, except when he visited his fields and gave directions to his one labourer, a business which seldom occupied more than an hour at a time. The old man was kind and sagacious. His slightest peculiarities were dear to her and no image she had ever seen with her bodily eyes was to her so agreeable as that of the grey-headed and weather-beaten face; but often while she sat beside him and supplied his little wants, or answered his few and simple observations, her thoughts would wander away to the restless boundless sea with all its shores and ships; and the little world around her, for which alone she had outwardly lived and which alone she knew, seemed poor and small, compared with the dazzling and amazing world of which she knew nothing. She naturally avoided to express her feelings which she was aware were stronger and more unusual than her father or indeed any of her acquaintance could understand or would approve. But the books which he found her reading, and the questions which she sometimes ventured to ask as to the seaport town which he had visited in his earlier life, in part betrayed her. One day during such a conversation he suddenly exclaimed,"Heaven help thee! the sea seems always running in thy head! I should not wonder if the first idle

sailor that comes wandering here catches thy foolish fancy, and carries thee off from all our honest country fellows. But take care Jane-they are an unsteady, spendthrift, drunken set. At best, their trade keeps them many a long month in every year away from their wives and children. Don't marry a sailor, Jane, don't marry a sailor, or thy old father will break his heart."

This advice was not very likely to change the current of Jane's thoughts. Her longing to look upon the sea grew rather the stronger; but to graify it was not easy. The summit indeed of the hills which bounded that inland country was not further off than two hours' walking; but this was through unfrequented paths and lonely sheeptracks up the downs. The village lay on no line of traffic with the coast, and to undertake an expedition to the shore without some purpose of business would have sounded among her neighbours like setting off on a crusade or a pilgrimage. She shrank from owning her beloved secret even to her father, and nothing therefore remained but to plan a clandestine excursion. This was possible only at night. A ramble of the kind however had nothing very alarming for a country girl. The imaginative apprehensions which alone presented themselves to the mind of Jane added to the charm, by enhancing the dignity of her enterprise. Spirits she thought must needs be peculiarly her attendants on the most momentous occasion of her whole life, which had now reached the mature age of eighteen.

The moon was shining in the summer sky when she crept through her chamber-window and sprang lightly on the ground. Had any one seen her, it must have seemed from the excitement of her look and manner under the homeliness of her dark dress, that she was bent on a different kind of meeting from that which she really meditated. She traversed the little garden, and went on by wellknown paths which led her away from the village, and under the shade of hedges and coppices. Rapidly and with beating heart she walked through quiet fields of corn, and began to think that she was now escaping all danger of interruption. In an hour she reached the less cultivated and less populous tract that divided the plain from the

upland. Here she heard from behind her the church clock which she knew so well, striking midnight. The path was no longer familiar to her, but she knew the direction she had to take, and her task increased in seriousness and interest the more completely she appeared engaged in it. The downs arose grim and grey before her, and after exploring for a few minutes, she struck into the path that climbed their sides, and felt that she had entered on a new world. But she began to be a little fatigued, and mounted the hills with less quickness than she crossed the valley. Still she met no human being. The moon was rising above her head and displayed her road, and she thought that she perceived the fresh sea-breeze blowing down from the heights upon her face. As she drew nearer and nearer to this aerial summit, which she had so often looked at almost with tears, she could hardly believe the reality of her own happiness. In spite of her weariness, her heart was borne up with wings. She paused for a moment a few yards below the top of the ascent, and then ran headlong on-and stopped.

There lay the sea beneath her, one sheet of indistinct grey and moonshine, with the dark land running off on either side. In the obscurity an angelic vision moved along, with the moon glancing on its white face; it must be could it be?-a ship! She felt how deep were her own emotions at the aspect of immense and unknown power,

though she could not have explained the cause. The excitement of her mind did not fail after its first rise, but varied and prolonged itself during her minuter examination of all that lay before her. The moonbeams shifted slowly as the luminary journeyed on and stooped towards the horizon. Here and there the stars were faintly reflected in the gauze-veiled mirror. The ship passed on in silent ghostliness, and disappeared, while the weak murmur of the waters on the shore beneath came to her as if whispering a secret which she vainly strained her ear to catch. She stood charmed to the spot, until the first glimses of the early dawn began to mingle with the gleams of night. And now she drank in with a mighty insatiable thirst each moment of the great unfolding vision. The brightening clouds-the strengthening breeze-the cold sad sparkling of the sea under the eye of day-the colouring of the landscape, and the starting into clearness of many vessels

all these were memorable events to Jane. But the weariness of the body and the exhaustion of the over-excited mind compelled her to rest, and by the increasing light she saw a few yards beneath her a small hollow in the hill, marked by an old thorn-tree which shaded a few large stones. On one of them she sat and watched the scene before her, till in spite of her efforts, her eyes closed against the light, and her head drooped sideways against the bank.

Jane had lost all consciousness, and was recalled from sleep only by a voice at which she started, and the first object that caught her eyes was a young man who stood before her with the broad sunshine streaming like a glory round his face, and with a figure so graceful and an attitude of surprise so lively, that Jane in the midst of her fear could not but think him the most beautiful object she had ever seen. It was a young sailor, who had taken off his hat to enjoy the air while climbing up the steep cliffs, and whose exclamation on seeing the sleeping girl had disturbed the dreams of her native village and her cottage hearth.

"No offence, I hope, young woman;

but I could not help calling out when I found you here, where I expected only the old thorn-tree."

"Oh, no,” she answered, "it is my fault-that is, I believe I have been asleep, and it is very wrong."

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Well, I do not see much harm, unless you had fallen asleep when it was your watch on deck, and you're hardly a sailor yet. But if I may make so bold, it must be something out of the way that brings you here at this hour of the morning. The sun is not above half an hour up. I have been this way pretty well at all hours, and I never found any one here yet but an old shepherd, and perhaps sometimes of an evening a pair of sweethearts; and you are none of the

neighbours-I know them young and old for three miles round."

Then came the explanation of Jane's adventure; and in telling it slightly as she did, there was to her own feelings a strain of extravagance in it, which she had never perceived until now, when she was compelled to speak of it. The stranger was full of wonder, but he thought, from her look and manner, she must be telling the truth. His determination to find out how this was gained strength perhaps from his sense of her personal charms; for the rounded active figure and the soft face, with her bright eyes, and long pale hair curling from under her bonnet, were not lost on one who in his voyages had seen many a pretty maiden, but never a prettier than Jane Martin. He immediately proposed, as he had no business that could not wait, to take care of her back to her father's. She refused with a deep blush and downcast look; and wishing him a good morning, had turned to go, but her steps faltered partly doubtless from fatigue. In a moment the young sailor was at her side, and insisted that she was too weak to return without his help. The arrangement was soon made; and at four o'clock in the morning the pair set off on their walk, which according to Jane's design ought to have ended about the same hour.

The road however was now down hill. She had succeeded in the great est aim she had ever conceived, and her companion's arm was of much assistance. Jane discovered in the first half-hour of their acquaintance, that he was the son of a fisherman's widow living in a cottage at the foot of the cliff. He had early gone to sea, and now at the age of twenty-two, had risen to be second mate of a merchantman in which he had made a voyage to the Mediterranean. He had been on returning to England on a visit to his mother, and had set out that morning to walk across the country to Southport, where he hoped again to obtain employment, and perhaps in a better situation than his last. After se veral other questions and replies, "How," she said, "do you pass the hours when there is nothing to be done in the ship?"

"I read or sing, or think of my friends at home; and I fancy that some day or other there may be some

one on shore, younger and prettier than my poor mother, who may remember me when I am away, as I should remember her."

If Jane had been a lady she would hardly have answered,-" Well, when I have nothing to do, I mostly think of the sea, and how men pass their lives upon it, and what sights they have to look at."

"And all this though you have no friend a sailor-no brother or cousin, or lad that you used to play with when you were both children?"

She blushed, and said, "No-no one. My mother's father was a sailor, and I have read of many more in books, but I never saw one to speak to before."

"And have you never thought if you would like to have a friend who had made many a voyage? Would it not be pleasant to be able to fancy that one you knew was on the wide waves, and thinking of you while you would be remembering him?-some one whose return you would look for, and who would bring you new stories every trip of all he had fallen in with, and perhaps some pretty trifles, and gowns and lace from foreign parts?"

It was with a low deep longing voice that she answered,—“ Oh, that would be too much happiness!" Then she hung her head and hid her face from him, but leaned the more clingingly on his arm. In truth she was almost overpowered by fatigue and want of sleep, and they were now at last within a stone's-throw of her father's door. She turned from the lane they were walking in, and passed over a stile into one of his fields; and when they reached the orchard behind the cottage she begged William to remain at its little gate while she went forward, for she did not know in what state she might find her father on account of her absence. He remained leaning on the gate for a few seconds till startled by a woman's scream, when he hurried in, and pushing through a passage which contained three or four persons, all in confusion, he found himself in the old man's bed

room. There were several neighbours round the bed, on which he lay apparently insensible, and Jane stood supporting herself by one of the bedposts, and with her eyes fixed on his face. William went to her side, and saw the closed eyes gradually open, and the

father began to see. The first objects he beheld were his daughter, and the young man standing by her in his sailor's dress. He looked at them long and sadly, and at last muttered, "I was sure it would be so."

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Jane now begged that she might be left alone with her father, who was used to her attendance, and specially requested William, as he was a stranger, to stay in the outer-room till she could go and speak to him. Reluctantly, and shaking their heads, the neighbours went away. The father was still very feeble, and it was only after long delay, broken by floods of tears from her, that she could communicate to him the story of her own proceedings, and could learn what he had to tell. On getting up, and not finding her in the house, he had hurried about his own premises; and still missing her, had alarmed the neighbours nearest him, and sent in different directions to look for her. But on two or three of the messengers returning without any tidings, he had fainted away, and a crowd had gathered round him, as he lay on his bed, the moment before Jane arrived. In an hour he felt sufficiently strong to rise; and he and his daughter went to rejoin the sailor, and offered him breakfast, of which they partook with him. But his fresh and lively look was very different from the stern sadness of the father, and from Jane's deep and confused dejection. He was not, however, discouraged from speaking, nor she from listening. Even the old man relaxed into civility before he took his leave.

It was not many days till he came again, and Jane soon learned that he had put off his journey to Southport. Thenceforth they met frequently; and in the summer evenings he was seen walking about the quiet country lanes with Jane leaning on his arm. It was, therefore, no surprise to the village, when the banns were read in the church for the marriage of Jane Martin and William Laurence. With slow gestures and thoughtful eyes her father gave her to her husband. They returned to live with him; and, in the first glad flush of their love, the old man died. His death was a shock to Jane, but not a lasting grief. She loved William too fully and entirely to feel any gap in her life while she possessed him; and though she would

have been ready to toil for her father's comfort, had he lived, his death was far from overpowering her. Naythough it is a severe truth-she felt relieved from his silent forebodings, and seemed to belong more entirely to William, now that all other claims on her had ceased.

Not long after this William's mother was taken ill, and he was sent for to see her. She died before his return, and both were now deprived of all they had much loved beyond each other. In a few weeks it became necessary for William to go again to his former home, in order to sell the furniture and let the cottage, and Jane proposed to accompany him. She rejoiced in the thought of again seeing the place where they had first met, and of knowing more familiarly that ocean which she had obtained so insufficient a glimpse of. They went thither, and took up their abode in the sea-side cottage. All about it spoke of maritime occupation. The house was partly constructed of wreck. The paling around the puny garden was of the broken and pitchy boarding of boats, and the shingle lay driven in barren heaps against it. Within a stone's-throw two or three fishingboats were drawn up on the beach, and the children of the fishers' families played along the shore. Within the cottage there was great want of many of the inland comforts Jane had been used to, but there were a few articles of transmarine curiosity, brought home by William, such as uncut coral and pink hearted shells.

Through the greater part of the day the husband and wife were busy in their household affairs, examining and arranging their new possessions. But in the evening they felt themselves more at liberty, and they strolled together along the shore. Jane knew not what it was that attracted her, but she had an obscure notion of a wonderful and friendly power in the sea, as if its movements had been the beatings of a mighty paternal breast on which she could lay her head. She walked along the outermost line of foam, and every wave that broke delighted, her, while at intervals she turned and stood, and looked over the waters with vague but deep emotion. A child who has been gazing at a lovely star till he almost fancies it is his own, would not be more gratified by