Here the fragment stopped; because Shirley's song, erewhile somewhat full and thrilling, had become delicately faint.
"Go on," said she.
"Then you go on, too. I was only repeating 'The Castaway.'"
"I know: if you can remember it all, say it all."
And as it was nearly dark, and, after all, Miss Keeldar was no formidable auditor, Caroline went through it. She went through it as she should have gone through it. The wild sea, the drowning mariner, the reluctant ship swept on in the storm, you heard were realized by her; and more vividly was realized the heart of the poet, who did not weep for the "The Castaway," but who, in an hour of tearless anguish, traced a semblance to his own God-abandoned misery in the fate of that man-forsaken sailor, and cried from the depths where he struggled:—
"No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,
When, snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished—each alone!
But I—beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."
"I hope William Cowper is safe and calm in heaven now," said Caroline.
"Do you pity what he suffered on earth?" asked Miss Keeldar.
"Pity him, Shirley? What can I do else? He
