Harper's Young People, May 2, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

ONE BY ONE THE LIGHTS FLARED UP.
A sky darkened by clouds hurrying before driving winds, a sea gray-faced and wrinkled tossing restlessly beneath a mass of barren rocks upon which stood a tall light-house, made up the dreary picture Huldah Deane was gazing upon with such wistful intentness. Her gray eyes presently followed the swoop of an osprey, and his after-flight upward with his prey in his talons.
I would rather be that fish-hawk than Huldah Deane, she said, giving expression to her gloomy thoughts. I must stay here day in, year out—here, where nothing happens, where the sea frets, and I fret with it. So I light the Captain's pipe, scrub the tower, and do chores for the dame. Who cares what else I do, or what becomes of me? Yes, old sea, I'd rather be a fish-hawk, and snatch fish from you, than be Huldah Deane. Oh dear! If something would only happen! If I could do something great or wonderful—go out in a life-boat, maybe, to save drowning folks, or—
Huldy! Huldy Deane! The quick, impatient call reached her, even above the roaring of the surf. It was Captain Dutton's voice. Come right on, quick; mother's taken in a spell, an' I can't make it out.
Huldah obeyed in awed silence. A spell the Captain couldn't make out must be very bad, she thought. What if neither she nor anybody else could make it out? And, alas! who could understand the fixed stare of the dame's kind eyes, or the pinched shrinking of the features so suddenly grown unfamiliar to the two who dwelt under the same roof with her?

She's got to hev the doctor as soon as he can be fetched, Huldy.
The doctor from shore? questioned the girl.
Certain. There's none closer as I know. Do you?
No, she gravely answered; but the mainland's a long ways off, and a storm's rising.