“No! no! you don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m glad you don’t—if I called ‘the whole world a cheat, and all men liars,’ you wouldn’t say yea and amen to that?”
“No; for I could prove to you that you mistook all about you. Oh, if you only knew how—”
“No more—good-night. You are not like other people, Ella, or we could not speak as we do together.”
II.
A dull November morning—rain had fallen in great quantities during the night, as George Waldron had predicted, and clouds yet covered
the entire heaven. Amid the leafless forest trees that covered the mountain side, stood here and there a few evergreens, like ghosts, robed in funereal gloom—the wind was fierce and cold—the waters of the lake rolled high and furiously, they dashed madly on the beach—they rolled far back and up, with maniac force.
The boy was there again, standing on the seashore—the sun had not yet risen—he stood where the sunlight had fallen the night before on Ella, but the light that had enveloped her as a glory-robe, was not on him. He looked pale, and very anxious, and from the rock where she had stood he restlessly and curiously scanned every wave that broke upon the beach.
He had been roused long before daylight from his slumbers, by the parson, Ella’s father, and at his request had gone for a physician, for Ella was very ill.
And all that night, after the leech was summoned, he walked or ran along the beach, waiting with an impatience so fierce that one could not call it childish, for day to come. His garments were soaked with rain, but he knew it not, neither was he conscious of fatigue, or cold, or faintness, but incessantly, as he went to and fro, wild prayers burst from his lips. In the gloom, and storm, and darkness, he harbored but one thought, one hope, the rescue of Ella’s golden cross from the waters. The moment he heard that she was ill, he said to himself, she will die, and his fiery soul, recalling her mild, reproachful look as she watched his sudden motion, and her gently-expressed regret when the cross was lost, began to torture him. The act of passion became a thousand times exaggerated, and the recollection maddened him.
All day he walked along that stormy beach, and when night came, it was not till thick darkness began to gather over land and flood, that he arose to go back to his mother’s house. Mrs. Waldron had but just come in from the parsonage—she was going back again for the night, for Ella was very ill—and this good woman was noted as an efficient nurse,