CHAPTER LXXXIX.
Mr Cupples returned to his work, for the catalogue had to be printed.
The weeks and months passed on, and the time drew nigh when it would be
no folly to watch the mail-coach in its pride of scarlet and gold, as
possibly bearing the welcome letter announcing Alec's return. At
length, one morning, Mrs Forbes said:
"We may look for him every day now, Annie."
She did not know with what a tender echo her words went roaming about
in Annie's bosom, awaking a thousand thought-birds in the twilight land
of memory, which had tucked their heads under their wings to sleep, and
thereby to live.
But the days went on and the hope was deferred. The rush of the
_Sea-horse_ did not trouble the sands of the shallow bar, or sweep,
with fiercely ramping figure-head, past the long pier-spike, stretching
like the hand of welcome from the hospitable shore. While they fancied
her full-breasted sails, swelled as with sighs for home, bowing lordly
over the submissive waters, the _Sea-horse_ lay a frozen mass, changed
by the might of the winds and the snow and the frost into the grotesque
ice-gaunt phantom of a ship, through which, the winter long, the winds
would go whistling and raving, crowding upon it the snow and the
crystal icicles, all in the wild waste of the desert north, with no ear
to hear the sadness, and no eye to behold the deathly beauty.
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