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 joy, his very life. And as the possession of a precious thing induces the conviction that the possessor has a right to it, so did Master Andrea after six months had elapsed live at peace, without misgivings.

But one Sunday his visitors thought they perceived a rosy little face flattened against the highest window of the tower.

"I fancy I see a child's face!" said one of the sailors.

"Yes," replied the other, "it is a child's face!"

"Aha! so Master Andrea has a child up there!"

"Won't we chaff him about it!"

Both the seamen, as soon as they saw the keeper, commenced to chaff him about the child. But Master Andrea turned deadly pale; he trembled from head to foot, and made incoherent replies, until at last he was forced to tell the whole truth. How gladly he would have strangled those two importunate gossips! Yet when they listened to the story, they became serious in their turn. Then they told him in reproachful tones that a poor lady from the neighbouring village passed day and night upon the shore stricken with grief, and awaiting the return of her husband and her child, who had gone to visit some relatives along the coast, and who had never returned. Carletto was, no doubt, the child of this sorrowing mother. Why had Master Andrea kept the affair so secret? Why? did he perchance think that the child had fallen from the clouds? Did he not think that it might have a mother? Or did he judge that it was nobody's child?

Master Andrea heard all these reproaches in mute dismay. He kept his eyes upon the ground, and seemed as though he had turned suddenly to stone.

At length he looked up.

"Take him away!" he said, in a low, husky voice. "I did not think he had a mother. I do not wish to keep him from her. I could not! Quick! return and tell the lady that her child is safe. No! stay!—take him to her at once!"

Slowly, sombrely, like to one who complies with a duty that entails an immense sacrifice, he went up to seek Carletto. For a few minutes he kept him in the room. He took him up in his arms, he smoothed his little head, he clasped him to his breast and kissed him passionately, and clipped a curl of his light hair. Then, somewhat consoled by the tears shed by the child on parting from him, he carerully placed him in the boat.

When the boat was quite lost to view, he went indoors, and resolved to forget the whole adventure. He gathered together his books and newspapers, which had been of late sorely neglected, and sat down to read. All to no purpose. They seemed to tell him of the march of society, they spoke to him of a future inevitable social revolution, and in alarm he cried, "What will become of Carletto?"

Unable to repress the yearning of his heart, he would daily stand for hours looking towards the shores of Roccamarina. On all sides he was surrounded by the immensity of the ocean.

He felt he could no longer live "in the midst of the sea."

months have passed. Master Andrea is no longer the keeper of the lighthouse of Isolotto.

He affirmed that living in the midst of the sea did not agree with his health; but the fishermen of Roccamarina declared that he longed to have his dense black beard pulled by the chubby hands of little Carletto.

Master Andrea lives in his paternal house tending the vineyard; but he is not alone. He has taken in the sorrow-stricken widow and her child, and labours day and night to support them.

He is perfectly resigned to his lot when he hears himself called "Papa" by the darling little fellow who, "in the midst of the sea," taught him how sweet it is to follow the commands of love.