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Oldport Days by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
page 50 of 175 (28%)
calm; yet it told of wasting sorrow and the wreck of a life.
Gleaming lustrous beneath the lightning, it had a more mystic
look when the long flash had ceased, and the single lantern
burned beneath it, like an altar-lamp before a shrine.

"It is Aunt Emilia," exclaimed the little girl; and as she spoke,
the father, turning angrily upon her, dashed the light to the
ground, and groped his way out without a word of answer. I was
too much alarmed about Severance to care for aught else, and
quickly made my way to the western piazza, where I found him
stunned by the fallen tree,--injured, I feared,
internally,--still conscious, but unable to speak.

With the aid of my two companions I got him home, and he was ill
for several weeks before he died. During his illness he told me
all he had to tell; and though Paul and his family disappeared
next day,--perhaps going on board the Nantucket brig, which had
narrowly escaped shipwreck,--I afterwards learned all the
remaining facts from the only neighbor in whom they had placed
confidence. Severance, while convalescing at a country-house in
Fayal, had fallen passionately in love with a young peasant-girl,
who had broken off her intended marriage for love of him, and had
sunk into a half-imbecile melancholy when deserted. She had
afterwards come to this country, and joined her sister, Paul's
wife. Paul had received her reluctantly, and only on condition
that her existence should be concealed. This was the easier, as
it was one of her whims to go out only by night, when she had
haunted the great house, which, she said, reminded her of her own
island, so that she liked to wear thither the capote which had
been the pride of her heart at home. On the few occasions when
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