The Deacon's daughters--the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you
noticed in meeting the other day--set the example among the young people
of treating her as their equal and companion. The dear good girls!
They reminded me of the maidens of Naxos cheering and comforting the
unhappy Ariadne.

"One mid-winter evening I took Julia with me to a poor sick patient of
mine, who was suffering for lack of attendance. The house where she
lived was in a lonely and desolate place, some two or three miles below
us, on a sandy level, just elevated above the great salt marshes,
stretching far away to the sea. The night set in dark and stormy; a
fierce northeasterly wind swept over the level waste, driving thick
snow-clouds before it, shaking the doors and windows of the old house,
and roaring in its vast chimney. The woman was dying when we arrived,
and her drunken husband was sitting in stupid unconcern in the corner of
the fireplace. A little after midnight she breathed her last.

"In the mean time the storm had grown more violent; there was a blinding
snow-fall in the air; and we could feel the jar of the great waves as
they broke upon the beach.

"'It is a terrible night for sailors on the coast,' I said, breaking our
long silence with the dead. 'God grant them sea-room!'

"Julia shuddered as I spoke, and by the dim-flashing firelight I saw she
was weeping. Her thoughts, I knew, were with her old friend and
playmate on the wild waters.

"'Julia,' said I, 'do you know that Robert Barnet loves you with all the
strength of an honest and true heart?'