days—and those days were not very long since—the building of small ships was their chief trade, and they valued their land mostly for the small scrubby cedar-trees with which this trade was carried on.

As one goes from St. George to Hamilton the road runs between two seas; that to the right is the ocean; that on the left is an inland creek, which runs up through a large portion of the islands, so that the land on the other side of it is near to the traveller.  For a considerable portion of the way there are no houses lying near the road, and, there is one residence, some way from the road, so secluded that no other house lies within a mile of it by land.  By water it might probably be reached within half a mile.  This place was called Crump Island, and here lived, and had lived for many years, an old gentleman, a native of Bermuda, whose business it had been to buy up cedar wood and sell it to the ship-builders at Hamilton.  In our story we shall not have very much to do with old Mr. Bergen, but it will be necessary to say a word or two about his house.

It stood upon what would have been an island in the creek, had not a narrow causeway, barely broad enough for a road, joined it to that larger island on which stands the town of St. George.  As the main road approaches the ferry it runs through some rough, hilly, open ground, which on the right side towards the ocean has never been cultivated.  The distance from the ocean here may, perhaps, be a quarter of a mile, and the ground is for the most part covered with low furze.  On the left of the road the land is cultivated in patches, and here, some half mile or more from the ferry, a path turns away to Crump Island.  The house cannot be seen from the road, and, indeed, can hardly be seen at all, except from the sea.  It lies, perhaps, three furlongs from the high road, and the path to it is but little used, as the passage to and from it is chiefly made by water.

Here, at the time of our story, lived Mr. Bergen, and here lived Mr. Bergen’s daughter.  Miss Bergen was well known at St. George’s as a steady, good girl, who spent her time in looking after her father’s household matters, in managing his two black maid-servants and the black gardener, and who did her duty in that sphere of life to which she had been called.  She was a comely, well-shaped young woman, with a sweet countenance, rather large in size, and very quiet in demeanour.  In her earlier years, when young girls usually first bud forth into womanly beauty, the neighbours had not thought much of Anastasia Bergen, nor had the young men of St. George been wont to stay their boats under the window of Crump Cottage in order that they might listen to her voice or feel the light of her eye; but slowly, as years went by, Anastasia Bergen became a woman that a man might well love; and a man learned to love her who was well worthy of a woman’s heart.  This was Caleb Morton, the Presbyterian minister of St. George; and Caleb Morton had been engaged to marry Miss Bergen for the last two years past, at the period of Aaron Trow’s escape from prison.

Caleb Morton was not a native of Bermuda, but had been sent thither by the synod of his church from Nova Scotia.  He was a tall, handsome man, at this time of some thirty years of age, of a presence which might almost have been called commanding.  He was very strong, but of a temperament which did not often give him opportunity to put forth his strength; and his life had been such that neither he nor others knew of what nature might be his courage.  The greater part of his life was spent in preaching to some few of the white people around him, and in teaching as many of the blacks as he could get to hear him.  His days were very quiet, and had been altogether without excitement until he had met with Anastasia Bergen.  It will suffice for us to say that he did meet her, and that now, for two years past, they had been engaged as man and wife.

Old Mr. Bergen, when he heard of the engagement, was not well pleased at the information.  In the first place, his daughter was very necessary to him, and the idea of her marrying and going away had hardly as yet occurred to him; and then he was by no means inclined to part with any of his money.  It must not be presumed that he had amassed a fortune by his trade in cedar wood.  Few tradesmen in Bermuda do, as I imagine, amass fortunes.  Of some few hundred pounds he was possessed, and these, in the course of nature, would go to his daughter when he died; but he had no inclination to hand any portion of them over to his daughter before they did go to her in the course of nature.  Now, the income which Caleb Morton earned as a Presbyterian clergyman was not large, and, therefore, no day had been fixed as yet for his marriage with Anastasia.

But, though the old man had been from the first averse to the match, his hostility had not been active.  He had not forbidden Mr. Morton his house, or affected to be in any degree angry because his daughter had a lover.  He had merely grumbled forth an intimation that those who marry in haste repent at leisure,—that love kept nobody warm if the pot did not boil; and that, as for him, it was as much as he could do to keep his own pot boiling at Crump Cottage.  In answer to this Anastasia said nothing.  She asked him for no money, but still kept his accounts, managed his household, and looked patiently forward for better days.

Old Mr. Bergen himself spent much of his time at Hamilton, where he had a woodyard with a couple of rooms attached to it.  It was his custom to remain here three nights of the week, during which Anastasia was left alone at the cottage; and it happened by no means seldom that she was altogether alone, for the negro whom they called the gardener would go to her father’s place at Hamilton, and the two black girls would crawl away up to the road, tired with the monotony of the sea at the cottage.  Caleb had more than once told her that she was too much alone, but she had laughed at him, saying that solitude in Bermuda was not dangerous.  Nor, indeed, was it; for the people are quiet and well-mannered, lacking much energy, but being, in the same degree, free from any propensity to violence.

“So you are going,” she said to her lover, one evening, as he rose from the chair on which he had been swinging himself at the door of the cottage which looks down over the creek of the sea.  He had sat there for an hour talking to her as she worked, or watching her as she moved about the place.  It was a beautiful evening, and the sun had been falling to rest with almost tropical glory before his feet.  The bright oleanders were red with their blossoms all around him, and he had thoroughly enjoyed his hour of easy rest.  “So you are going,” she said to him, not putting her work out of her hand as he rose to depart.

“Yes; and it is time for me to go.  I have still work to do before I can get to bed.  Ah, well; I suppose the day will come at last when I need not leave you as soon as my hour of rest is over.”

“Come; of course it will come.  That is, if your reverence should choose to wait for it another ten years or so.”

“I believe you would not mind waiting twenty years.”

“Not if a certain friend of mine would come down and see me of evenings when I’m alone after the day.  It seems to me that I shouldn’t mind waiting as long as I had that to look for.”

“You are right not to be impatient,” he said to her, after a pause, as he held her hand before he went.  “Quite right.  I only wish I could school myself to be as easy about it.”

“I did not say I was easy,” said Anastasia.  “People are seldom easy in this world, I take it.  I said I could be patient.  Do not look in that way, as though you pretended that you were dissatisfied with me.  You know that I am true to you, and you ought to be very proud of me.”

“I am proud of you, Anastasia—” on hearing which she got up and courtesied to him.  “I am proud of you;