caressings, which seemed to have no likeness to the wild rushes and
blows of two months before. She looked towards it wistfully,--for Sara
loved the sea,--then, yielding to the homesick impulse, turned from the
narrow street to the beach, and walked briskly away towards a spur of
rock which jutted into the water sharply at some distance away.

Arrived here, she sought with assured footsteps a certain zig-zag way--
it could hardly be called a path--which wound in and out among the
bowlders, skipping some, leaping others, trenching on the edges of
little pools left in some rocky hollow by the high tide, and finally led
her, after a last steep scramble, into a niche of the sea's own
hollowing, which she had always claimed as her own.

Seated just within, she could look down upon a narrow causeway, into
which the water came tumbling through an aperture in the rocks much like
a roughly shaped gothic window, and, having tumbled in, tumbled out
again, with much curling and confusion, leaving its angry foam in sudsy
heaps along the rocky edges which opposed its farther advance.

This bit of nature was named the "Devil's Causeway" by the natives, who
have a way of bestowing all particularly grand and rugged sites upon
that disagreeable personage; but Sara, having no mind to give up her
favorite spot to his satanic majesty, always named it to herself the
"Mermaid's Castle," and had a childish legend of her own about an
enchanted princess confined here and guarded by the sea until the coming
of the prince,--her lover.

Happy to be here once more, Sara leaned back against the rock, which
felt warm, kindly, and familiar; then, removing her sun-bonnet, fanned
her flushed face, and looked dreamily away to the pale opaline horizon,