Stealing softly out, I left him to the silent Comforter
whose blessing is on the mourner.
Now the scene was changed. One was suddenly taken from his side who
had been a companion from boyhood to old age. They had played and
worked in company; together they had embarked on their first voyage,
and their last; and they had settled down in close neighborhood in the
evening of their days. Each had preserved the other's life in some
moment of peril, but took small praise to himself for so simple an act
of duty. Few words of fondness had ever passed between them. They had
gone along the path of life, without perhaps being conscious of any
peculiarly strong tie of friendship binding them together, till they
were thus torn asunder. The death of a daughter, long and slowly
wasting away before his eyes, could be calmly borne. But this blow was
wholly unforeseen, and his chest heavily rose and fell, and by the
bright firelight I saw tears rolling over his weather-beaten cheeks.
"A child will weep a bramble's smart,
A maid to see her sparrow part,
A stripling for a woman's heart;
Talk not of grief, till thou hast seen
The hard-drawn tears of bearded men."
The fury of the storm being abated, I resolved to follow Stephen down
to the shore.
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