cannot help it! You cannot escape from me now! You cannot go to sea! You cannot turn your back upon wretched me. I have you safe now! Safe!" and she clutched his hands triumphantly. "Ah! and what a wretch I am, to rejoice in that! to taunt him with his blindness! Oh, forgive me! I am but a poor wild girl—a wild Indian savage, you know: but—but" and she burst into tears.
A great spasm shook the body and soul of Amyas Leigh; he sat quite silent for a minute, and then said solemnly—
"And is this still possible? Then God have mercy upon me a sinner!"
Ayacanora looked up in his face inquiringly: but before she could speak again, he had bent down, and lifting her as the lion lifts the lamb, pressed her to his bosom, and covered her face with kisses.
The door opened. There was the rustle of a gown; Ayacanora sprang from him with a little cry, and stood, half-trembling, halfdefiant, as if to say—" He is mine now; no one dare part him from me!"
"Who is it?" asked Amyas.
"Your mother."
"You see that I am bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, mother," said he, with a smile.
He heard her approach. Then a kiss and a sob passed between the women; and he felt Ayacanora sink once more upon his bosom.
"Amyas, my son," said the silver voice of Mrs. Leigh, low, dreamy, like the far-off chimes of angels' bells from out the highest heaven; "Fear not to take her to your heart again; for it is your mother who has laid her there."
"It is true after all," said Amyas to himself. "What God has joined together, man cannot put asunder."
*******
From that hour Ayacanora's power of song returned to her; and day by day, year after year, her voice rose up within that happy home, and soared, as on a skylark's wings, into the highest heaven, bearing with it the peaceful thoughts of the blind giant back to the Paradises of the West, in the wake of the heroes who from that time forth sailed out to colonize another and a vaster England, to the heaven prospered cry of Westward-Ho!
THE END.
