Unclasping, with some difficulty, her fingers from the rock, into which
they seemed to have grown, Mysie grasped the proffered hand, and the
next moment was safe upon the turf.

"Oh, my good gracious!" muttered the kind old man; but whether the
exclamation was caused by Mysie's face, pale, no doubt, by the effort
necessary to raise her half-fainting figure, or by the idea of the peril
in which she had been, did not appear.

Clarissa, calm and equable, was next passed up by Caleb, who, declining
the proffered hand, drew himself up, by a firm grasp upon the rocky
scarp of the cliff.

"Guess you was scart some then, wa'n't you?" inquired Clarissa, as the
party walked homeward.

"Oh, no!" replied Mysie, quickly. "But I could not get over the top of
the cliff alone,--it was so steep."

"Oh, that was the matter?" drawled the child, with a sidelong glance of
her sharp black eyes.

The northeast wind which went fossilizing with Mysie and Clara on their
first excursion was the precursor of a furious storm of rain and wind,
ranking, according to the dictum of experienced weatherseers, as little
inferior to that famous one in which fell the Minot's Ledge Light-house.

As the gale reached its height, it was a sight at once terrible and
beautiful, to watch, standing in the lantern, the goaded sea, whose