on which my whole destiny depended.-I saw a vessel which appeared to be just upon the point of leaving an opposite wharf. The thought at once struck me that I might find employment on board, and there earn an honest, though hard subsistence, unknown to those whose sneers I so much dreaded.

I found strength to reach the quay almost on a run. I even sprang, rather than stepped, upon the deck of the vessel. "Where is your captain?" I demanded of the busy sailors. Ere an answer could be returned, I heard a voice exclaim, in joyful surprise, "Mr. Levis !" and a man, stepping before me, grasped my right hand in both

his own.

"You do not remember me. I am James Berther, the poor man whom your generosity snatched from the grave, whose family you rescued from worse than death.-You do not know me yet?-True! I'm altered now-thanks to your uncle's skill and kindness,-but first to you-I owe it all to you!-Come with me to the cabin, Mr. Levis ; I will explain it all."

I knew him now. Thus, for the hour of my greatest need, had Providence built a haven of refuge, in the only purely good act that had marked the vicious days of my prosperity. And my heart whispered the beautifully solemn verse, Blessed be the man that provideth for the sick and needy; the Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble.

CHAPTER VI.

There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain;
And though that nature with a beauteous wall
Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee

I will believe, thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character.

Twelfth Night.

Then rose, from sea to sky, the wild farewell!
Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave—

Don Juan.

AFTER giving some rapid order to his mate, the master of the vessel (for such was Berther,) conducted me to the cabin; but, my temporary excitement being now over, he was obliged, to his evident surprise, to assist me down the companion-way. When at the bottom he gazed at me a moment, and sprang back with an exclamation of horrour;-for the suffering I had lately undergone in mind and body, and the manner in which I had passed the last two nights, must have given a ghastly and hag. gard expression to my sunken features, and a filthy wildness to my person.

"Yes; I am altered," I said, replying to his look and exclamation; "I have not eaten a mouthful for two days," —and, unable to stand any longer, I sank upon a chair.

Without a word in return, the captain called to the steward to bring bread and wine instantly; then, seating himself near me, he looked sadly in my face, for some minutes, without speaking. I understood this expressive silence. "Yes," I said; "You see a mournful change, Mr. Berther. A little while ago I was wealthy,-too much so, indeed, for my own good; now, I am a ruined man

-without a shilling-without a friend, in the world.” A deeper shade immediately darkened the captain's brow. "Now, I thought, I shall never more be happy. All men, I find, are alike; there are no friends but halcyon friends, that are never found but when the sea is calm." Happily I was deceived; for the master, with an expression glowing in his eyes that made his plain features. appear almost handsome, said, the moment his emotions ceased to fetter his utterance,

"I little thought, Mr. Levis, when I lay, in poverty, upon a bed of sickness, and you came like a ministering angel to raise me,-I little thought then, when you said that the day perhaps might come, when you should need a like kindness to that you was rendering me,-O, sir! I little thought your words would ever prove true !.......But now, that the day has indeed come, I thank God it is in my power to show myself grateful. All I have is yours: take it-use it as you will

!”

I am a very woman in any thing that moves me. My eyes moistened as I took the captain's hand, and interrupted him, "Not so, dear sir. I am here for the very purpose of obtaining assistance; but you must suffer me to fix the terms on which that assistance may be accepted. You are master of this vessel: you may, perhaps, have occasion for a clerk; I will

"Mr. Levis-!" exclaimed the captain. But here the steward entered, and, with a natural sense of propriety, which, as it is the joint production of a good head and a good heart, his rough profession had not been able to destroy, he immediately checked himself to give me an opportunity of allaying my hunger.

I almost cried with joy when I saw the articles of food before me ;-I sprang to the table; I seized the bread; I broke off a piece; but such was my debility and the irritable state of my stomach, that, the instant I put it to my mouth, I was seized with dizziness, and fell senseless into the arms of the captain.

When I revived, Mr. Berther made me swallow some wine a little diluted; and then a small portion of the bread, then some wine again (but pure), and then another portion of the bread, and so on, by little and little, till, the strength of my whole system thus renovated through its "centre," I breathed another man.

He then said, resuming the discourse which had been interrupted, "You will accept my assistance, Mr. Levis, only upon certain conditions. You forget, sir, that thus you are reproaching me for being indebted to yours." He was right. "True. -You are about to sail soon, I presume, for the West-Indies ?"

"Yes; we are already clearing from the wharf, and shall set sail with the first fair wind."

"Well then; you shall take me with you; I have no tie to bind me to this land; there are many little things that I can do on shipboard; and when you arrive at the end of your voyage, perhaps I may find some employ. ment that will enable me to refit my shattered fortune ;there are many Englishmen who, from a worse condition than mine, have risen to be rich in the West Indies, (I added, with a melancholy smile,).”

And so the matter was settled, and I went to sea.

Few men have I known that better pleased me than Mr. Berther. Sensible, and, though almost wholly selftaught, well informed; with all a sailor's frankness (or rather all the frankness that is attributed to the sailor,) and very little, if any of a sailor's roughness; he was, moreover, sincerely pious-a rare merit in one of his profession. Yet he never made his feelings clash unneces. sarily with those of others, nor when the storm raged put a prayer-book into his men's hands instead of a rope; but kept his piety, where alone it could be cherished, in the warm cover of his own bosom and, though seldom in. dulging in the folly of an oath himself, he knew he might as well draw the blood from his sailors' veins, and then bid them work, as expect them to do their duty without blaspheming. Hence he was beloved and respected by all

his crew, and, consequently, never was there crew more orderly. Once, the first time I discovered the peculiar colour of his sentiments, when I had said to him "It is very rarely we find a man in your profession think and act as you do, Mr. Berther," he answered :—

"I hope not, sir; for in what profession is the little piety you give me credit for more needed than in ours? O, Mr. Levis, if we, between whom and God's vengeance there are but a few thin planks,-if we, who know not, when we lie down at night, that our eyes shall ever again open but to see our death, and then close forever,-if we should not be pious, who is there on the earth that should?"

I hung my head in silence for some minutes, and a sigh found its way to my lips; for, though owing to the power of habit, which wears all things down to the same dead level, fact will not furnish the proper answer to this ques. tion, I thought how much happier I should have been, how much less miserable I should be now, were such my feelings.

"When you speak thus, Mr. Berther," I said, "you bid me think how basely I have misused the advantages that were heaped upon me-.

"No," replied my friend-for was he not a friend in. deed?―; "those advantages are the very causes of your straying it is only adversity, Mr. Levis, such, for instance, as I have suffered, a complete destitution of all the comforts of this world, that bids men look for comfort to another. Besides, in youth though it is well to judge ourselves with harshness, as it is thus alone we may correct our faults, yet others should not look with too severe an eye upon the mis-steps we may make; for, when the imagination is so luxuriant, and overtops the dwarfish judgment, is it strange that we should love to slumber under its delusive shade? You reproach yourself for your errors, Mr. Levis; and you do rightly: but I am an older man,—I have known you, too, on one occasion,—and I may be permitted to judge more mildly. Your errors, VOL. II.

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