seeing it suddenly drop from the skies into his lap.

"Jane," said William, "you seem as much pleased as a child with a new toy; yet the sea is not to be joked with. Though there is only a little ripple on it now, I have seen a swell that frightened the best seaman on board; and many a hundred-ay, many a thousand ships, with all their crews, have gone to the bottom, smooth as you may think it atop. I must tell you some stories of shipwrecks, that you may not fancy it all plain sailing, and may be willing to go back home, away from the surf."

"You need not," said Jane; "I heard plenty such stories from my mother, and I have not forgotten one of them. Besides, the woman with the green hair, who appeared to my grandfather, is dreadful enough.”

"The woman with the green hair!" said William suddenly. "Who saw that? who told you of it?"

"My grandfather saw it twice, and my mother told me of it. He used to make voyages to Holland and Germany, I think, for I remember my mother showing me the places in our old map. Once he had not long left the port, somewhere abroad, when the fog began to thicken round him, and the wind, at the same time, to rise. The sailors wanted him to turn back, but he would not, for he was a very bold and obstinate man. The weather grew worse and worse; and at last, when he had just refused the advice of all on board to go back into harbour, he saw a figure rise out of the water on the side nearest the wind, and float in the air against the fog, close to the mast. She put out her hands, as if to push him and his ship back, and he noticed her so well that he could describe her as he could any of his friends. She was young and handsome, in a long grey dress, with pale green hair hanging down over her neck. My grandfather would not heed, and that night his ship was dashed upon the shore, and he lost every thing he had; all his crew were drowned, and he was thrown upon the beach himself, almost a corpse." "Well," said William, "was that all? did he ever see her again?"

"Yes. For some years after this he made successful voyages, and he spoke to his family of the sight he had seen as of something strange and re

markable, but not as if it had been of any real importance. My mother had heard him describe the figure so often, that she said she felt as if she had seen it herself. After she had been married for some months, she went with her husband to pay her father a visit, before she should sail on what he intended should be his last voyage. He had laid out most of his property in a cargo for the vessel, and expected to make a great deal of money by it. The evening before he was to sail, he was returning from the harbour to the house he lived in, a mile or two out of Southport. The way lay along the sea-side, and it was a beautiful summer evening, with a slight sunny mist spread over the water. After he had got clear of the town, he turned round to look at the masts of his ship, which were plain enough to be seen, and he noticed an odd movement, with some faint lines in the sunshine, above the water. It grew clearer and clearer, till he saw that it was the woman with the green hair. He could have thought it an hour since he last saw her, so exactly was she the same, except that now a weak yellow brightness from the sun fell over her grey dress and pale green hair. She waved her hand and looked at him, so that he understood well enough that she warned him not to go back to the ship. At first, he owned, he was dreadfully frightened, but as she did not cease her warnings, he turned his head from her and proceeded on his way. He did not dare to look back again till he had struck into a path that led down a hollow, so that the sea was hidden from him. There was then no appearance of the figure. He came home much changed in his manner, and his face and voice were very sad when he told his wife and daughter what had happened to him. But he could not afford to give up his voyage; and, besides, he would not have borne to be laughed at by his friends, as he must have been had he staid on shore for such a reason.'

"And what came of it?"

"My mother never saw him after the next morning, when he went to sea. He was washed overboard aud drowned before the eyes of his crew. I was born three or four months after, and my mother was so affected by her loss, and by the story of the greenhaired woman, that she thought the

new happiness to both the parents.William too had grown tolerably familiar with rural occupations, and was pleased with the cultivation of his land. It was now again midsummer, and the village with its fields and trees looked as beautiful as when Jane set out on her first expedition to the sea. But how different were now her feelings!Is seemed to her as if in some mysterious way she had in William married the sea itself, and her restless fancies were all quieted. But this calm was not to last. It was a bright July evening, and William had come in from the fields, and was sitting down to his meal with his wife, who was preparing the table, while he danced the child upon his knee, when the postman came to the door with a letter, which from the rarity of the occurrence startled them as if it had been a gunshot fired it into the room. The father turned pale when he saw the handwriting, and laid the child on the floor. It was as he expected a letter from his old captain, saying that he had lost his fortune by an unsuccessful speculation, and was now about to embark again on a voyage to Brazil, in which he claimed William's promised help as chief mate of the ship. He saw at once that he must go. Jane spent the evening and most of the night in weep ing, while he endeavoured to explain to her his wishes as to her mode of life in his absence, and the measures she should take for the management of the farm, which with her active rural habits did not promise to be a very difficult business. The next morning at day-break, he started from Meadham on his way to Southport, and Jane and her child were left to cheer each other as they might.

The autumn and winter passed on, and with the spring she had the hope of again seeing her husband. But not so was it to be. The spring brightened into summer, but William came not with the leaves and crops.

The summer advanced to maturity but the husband of Jane did not come to reap his harvest. She could no longer endure the sight of Meadham, and as the sea-side cottage was now again untenanted, she resolved to remove thither, as if in being nearer the sea she should be nearer to William. She intrusted her farm to a labourer on whom she could rely, and

went with her child to live upon the strange and inhospitable shore. For some weeks she would spend hours in looking over the sea and watching every vessel; but she grew weary of this habit, and devoted herself to her son. He was growing into a vigorous and lively child, and his likeness to his father perpetually reminded her of the husband she had lost. Her talk with the boy related almost entirely to the life and exploits of seamen, and she seemed to devote him from his infancy to the task of one day follow. ing and recovering his parent. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as to see him mingle with the fishermen and their children, and so partly prepare himself for his future life. Once indeed she returned to Meadham for a few days, in order to arrange the affairs of the farm, and took Richard with her. But the delight with which he beheld the inland cultivation, the large trees, the green and yellow fields, and the comparative comfort and spaciousness of the farm-house, so alarmed his mother, that she never let him return there for more than a few hours. Gradually he came to consider the sea as his inevitable destination, and to share in her superstition that if he but sailed on a distant voyage, he could not fail to find his father. He was about eight years old when he begged to be allowed to accompany one of the fisherman in his voyage to Southport, where was the market for his fish, and back to the fishing village-an expedition which would last in all probability only a day. He departed in all the joyousness of childhood, and his mother who had clothed him in a new dress like that of a full-grown seaman and not like that of a fisherman, saw the boat set sail with her son on board, as happily as if he had been going to his wedding. But while her eyes were still fixed on it, and before it had gained twenty yards from the beach, she discovered, sitting beside the mast, and as it were pushing the child towards the land, the grey figure of a woman with long green hair. She could not be mistaken; it was distinctly visible against the dark red sail; Jane sack back on the shingle, pointing towards it with her outstretched hand. After a long delay, she found strength to regain her home and spent the whole day at the win

off the clothes, washed away the sand and salt, stretched him as if in sleep where he had been used to lie, and then threw herself beside the senseless clay, and pressed it to her bosom.Passionate grief, and floods of tears followed, and then again she lay exhausted and helpless, till her returning strength broke out anew in bursts of misery; at last she was motionless as the corpse itself, and almost equally lifeless. And while in this state, with her moveless arms hanging round the body, a stranger, in the first grey of the dawn, entered the house, the door of which was unfastened, and saw by the sickly expiring light the spectacle of the mother and her dead child. At first he started and shuddered, but soon began to gaze steadily on the pair, till gathering conviction, he exclaimed, "Jane, Jane, can this be you ?"

She raised herself slowly and silently in the bed from beside her child, and looked at the speaker. A minute passed before she cried aloud, "William, I have killed our boy." It was indeed William, returned a broken and haggard man. They spent the following

hours in such melancholy talk as became their condition. Jane learned that her husband's vessel had been wrecked on the coast of South America; that he and one or two others had escaped, but had been long detained in the interior, partly by the whites, partly among the Indians; had made several unsuccessful attempts to reach Europe, and only now, after eight years' absence, had arrived in England in a vessel from Monte Video. He had landed at Southport, and hastened to the fishing village, which was hardly out of his road to Meadham, and where he expected to hear some intelligence of his wife and child.

The corpse was borne in its coffin on the shoulders of the fishermen along the path to Meadham. for the cart-road went many miles round. William and Jane walked together behind the bearers up the down, and past the lover's seat where they had first met, and along the whole track on which that summer morning she had been supported by his arm while returning to her father's house. His hair was now gray, but here was white as snow.