Wyseby

86 WYSEBY : A LEGEND
mult of mad life rolling over them disturbed them
not. His youngest — his Marion — was left, and the
affections that could not die, — the affections of the
truly good cannot die, — grew around her. She was,
at the time of which I speak, about eighteen ; and
although she was no beauty, there was in her calm,
mild face something that the gazer loved to dwell
upon ; and although he thought calmly, he thought
often of the mild girl, for ever quiet, holy things
suggested memories of her,
" 'Twas a winter evening. Under a sky of solid
darkness, the vexed ocean moaned and heaved ; and
the winds fitfully howled, as if they were prisoned
in its deep caves. Anon, red lightning cleft the
solid darkness, and the winds were set free, and the
waves leapt into the air, shaking their white heads,
and night was a wild anarchy. Walter and his
daughter sat by the hearth of their humble home,
pitying those whose life-battle must be fought on
the waste of waters, — when, hark ! pealing above
the wrathful voices of the storm, one of those wild,
agonised shrieks, which, once heard, are never for-
gotten, smote their ears. A moment, and Walter
stood upon the beach. All was dark — dark ! — but
ever and ever came that wild yell, — now dying away
'mid the blended voices of the tempest ; now rising,
tearfully audible, over all. From the bosom of the
dead darkness the red lightning rushed down. For
an instant the face of the troubled waters were illu-
minated. There — there, not two cable-lengths from
the shore, a doomed vessel sails by; — her masts
bare, and her deck crowded with faces, ghastly in
hat awful light. In the omnipotent darkness the
vessel — the sea — is invisible again. A moment — a