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Thus refreshed and strengthened, Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine took up their oars, while I swam slightly in advance, as before. When, with occasional intermissions of rest, and a good deal of desultory conversation, we had swept and swam for about an hour, Mrs. Lecks suddenly exclaimed, "I can see that thing ever so much plainer now, and I don't believe it's a ship at all. To me it looks like bushes."

"You're mighty long-sighted without your specs," said Mrs. Aleshine, "and I'm not sure but what you're right."

For ten minutes or more I had been puzzling over the shape of the dark spot, which was now nearly all the time in sight. Its peculiar form had filled me with a dreadful fear that it was the steamer, bottom upward; although I knew enough about nautical matters to have no good reason to suppose that this could be the case. I am not far-sighted; but when Mrs. Lecks suggested bushes, I gazed at the distant object with totally different ideas, and soon began to believe that it was not a ship, either right side up or wrong side up, but that it might be an island. This belief I proclaimed to my companions; and for some time we all worked with increased energy, in the desire to get near enough to make ourselves certain in regard to this point.

"As true as I'm standin' here," said Mrs. Lecks, who, although she could not read without spectacles, had remarkably good sight at long range, "them is trees and bushes that I see before me, though they do seem to be growin' right out of the water."

"There's an island under them; you may be sure of that!" I cried. "And isn't this ever so much better than a sinking ship? »

"I'm not so sure about that," said Mrs. Aleshine.

"I'm used

to the ship, and as long as it didn't sink I'd prefer it. There's plenty to eat on board of it, and good beds to sleep on, which is more than can be expected on a little bushy place like that ahead of us. But then the ship might sink all of a suddint,— beds, victuals, and all."

"Do you suppose that is the island the other boats went to?" asked Mrs. Lecks.

This question I had already asked of myself. I had been told that the island to which the captain intended to take his boats lay about thirty miles south of the point where we left the steamer. Now, I knew very well that we had not come thirty miles; and had reasons to believe, moreover, that the greater part

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of the progress we had made had been toward the north. It was not at all probable that the position of this island was unknown to our captain; and it must therefore have been considered by him as an unsuitable place for the landing of his passengers. There might be many reasons for this unsuitableness: the island might be totally barren and desolate; it might be the abode of unpleasant natives; and more important than anything else, it was in all probability a spot where steamers never touched.

But whatever its disadvantages, I was most wildly desirous to reach it; more so, I believe, than either of my companions. I do not mean that they were not sensible of their danger, and desirous to be freed from it; but they were women who had probably had a rough time of it during a great part of their lives, and on emerging from their little circle of rural experiences accepted with equanimity, and almost as a matter of course, the rough times which come to people in the great outside world.

"I do not believe," I said, in answer to Mrs. Lecks, that that is the island to which the captain would have taken us; but whatever it is, it is dry land, and we must get there as soon as we can."

"That's true," said Mrs. Aleshine, "for I'd like to have ground nearer to my feet than six miles; and if we don't find anythin' to eat and any place to sleep when we get there, it's no more than can be said of where we are now."

"You're too particular, Barb'ry Aleshine," said Mrs. Lecks, "about your comforts. If you find the ground too hard to sleep on when you get there, you can put on your life-preserver, and go to bed in the water."

"Very good," said Mrs. Aleshine; "and if these islands are made of coral, as I've heard they was, and if they're as full of small p'ints as some coral I've got at home, you'll be glad to take a berth by me, Mrs. Lecks.”

I counseled my companions to follow me as rapidly as possible, and we all pushed vigorously forward. When we had approached near enough to the island to see what sort of place it really was, we perceived that it was a low-lying spot, apparently covered with verdure, and surrounded, as far as we could see as we rose on the swells, by a rocky reef, against which a tolerably high surf was running. I knew enough of the formation of these coral islands to suppose that within this reef was a lagoon of smooth water, into which there were openings through the rocky

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barrier. It was necessary to try to find one of these; for it would be difficult and perhaps dangerous to attempt to land through the surf.

Before us we could see a continuous line of white-capped breakers; and so I led my little party to the right, hoping that we should soon see signs of an opening in the reef.

We swam and paddled, however, for a long time, and still the surf rolled menacingly on the rocks before us. We were now as close to the island as we could approach with safety; and I determined to circumnavigate it, if necessary, before I would attempt with these two women to land upon that jagged reef. At last we perceived, at no great distance before us, a spot where there seemed to be no breakers; and when we reached it we found, to our unutterable delight, that here was smooth water flowing through a wide opening in the reef. The rocks were piled up quite high, and the reef, at this point at least, was a wide one; for as we neared the opening we found that it narrowed very soon and made a turn to the left, so that from the outside we could not see into the lagoon.

I swam into this smooth water, followed close by Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine,—who however soon became unable to use their oars, owing to the proximity of the rocks. Dropping these useful implements, they managed to paddle after me with their hands; and they were as much astonished as I was when, just after making the slight turn, we found stretched across the narrow passage a great iron bar about eight or ten inches above the water. A little farther on, and two or three feet above the water, another iron bar extended from one rocky wall to the other. Without uttering a word I examined the lower bar, and found one end of it fastened by means of a huge padlock to a great staple driven into the rock. The lock was securely wrapped in what appeared to be tarred canvas. A staple through an eye

hole in the bar secured the other end of it to the rocks.

"These bars were put here," I exclaimed, "to keep out boats, whether at high or low water. You see they can only be thrown out of the way by taking off the padlocks."

They won't keep us out," said Mrs. Lecks, "for we can duck under. I suppose whoever put 'em here didn't expect anybody to arrive on life-preservers."

ELIZABETH BARSTOW STODDARD

(1823-1902)

LIZABETH BARSTOW, the wife of Richard Henry Stoddard, was born in Massachusetts, May 6th, 1823. She was married to the poet in 1851; and a few years later began to write stories and poems so intense and individual, that though anonymous they were recognized at once as the work of a new writer. The Morgesons' appeared in 1862, 'Two Men' in 1865, and "Temple House' in 1867, a new edition being issued in 1888.

In advance of her time by a generation, Mrs. Stoddard belongs to the school of Maeterlinck and Ibsen rather than to the romantic period of fiction of the day in which she wrote. Whether she records humble life in a New England village, as in 'Two Men'; or the story of an ancestral mansion in an American seaport town, as in 'Temple House'; or the history of a "queer" family, as in 'The Morgesons,'her work is metaphysical like Ibsen's. Her men and women reproduce types not infrequently found in forgotten New England towns. They are strong self-centred characters, in whom an active intellect and intense nervous energy, compressed by narrow surroundings, produce numberless idiosyncrasies. In their moral isolation, they are still grim Puritans in everything but creed. Mrs. Stoddard drew them with a wonderful comprehension of the hidden springs of their action. Like Ibsen, she exemplified life and illustrated her dramatic force in breathless tragic episodes.

It is true, however, that before she was a dramatist, she was a psychologist: a sphinx sitting on the stony way to the temple, and looking with unquestioning eyes into life's problem. That method of suggestion which is our latest fashion in literature, Mrs. Stoddard used when it was not a fashion, but a form of reticence. There are descriptions in her novels cut with a chisel; others in which nature is used as a background to scenes of intense thought, in moments of outward stillness. She was a realist before the word had been defined. She dwells in shadows as grim as those of Wuthering Heights,' in an atmosphere so dense that we see the movements of her characters as through a thick glass screen; but each person, each scene, is touched with a gleam of poetic light.

It was as a poet, perhaps, that she gained her highest fame; though no book of the time, according to the great English critic,

Mr. Leslie Stephen, is more remarkable than her Temple House.' Mrs. Stoddard had been writing and publishing poems since her girlhood, but they were not collected until 1896. In them is reflected the spirit of her fiction, the tragic atmosphere with which her novels are surcharged. Burning with intensity, if a spirit so hopeless may be said to burn, these strange, reserved, yet passionately regretful lyrics have for their theme the pain of quiet endurance, the disappointment of an ardent fancy, and the sorrow of an unsatisfied heart. Those written in early youth might have been penned by Maeterlinck, -tragical, musical, introspective; Stoddard himself might have taught her the ringing, forcible strains in 'The House by the Sea,' or in 'Xanthos' and 'Achilles,' - poems in blank verse, sonorous, dignified, individual. The highest expression of her poetic gift is found perhaps in short poems, like Mercedes,' where passion, sullen, deep, and pitiless, veils itself in tropical beauty.

In both her poems and her novels is reflected her sense of the beauty and aloofness of nature; of the "dusty answers" to the clamors of impetuous human souls. She died in New York City, August 1, 1902.

THE GREAT GALE

From Temple House.' Copyright 1888, by O. M. Dunham. Published by the Cassell Publishing Company

MA

had come.
giving way.

AT SUTCLIFFE announced to Argus one morning that spring The ice on the shores and inside the bay was And he asked Argus if gales were not to be looked for? They compared notes about the weather, and concluded to look for southerly storms.

The weather softened so that very day that Tempe threw aside her shawl, and Roxalana made the tour of all the rooms, and by way of a walk went up to the attic to look over the fields and bay. She remarked to Argus, on coming down, that she had never seen the White Flat so plainly: it appeared to be stretching across the harbor's mouth.

"The ice made it look so, probably," he replied.

The snow around the house began to melt, and in the stillness they heard the water trickling everywhere.

"Soon," said Roxalana, "the buds will begin to swell."

At sunset the atmosphere was spongy and rotten. Masses of vapor rolled up from the south, extinguishing a pale brassy band