PERSONS OF THE STORY.     

                Sir Joseph Graybrooke. . . . . . . . . .(Knight)                Richard Turlington . . . . (Of the Levant Trade)                Launcelot Linzie . .(Of the College of Surgeons)                James Dicas. . . . . .(Of the Roll of Attorneys)                Thomas Wildfang. . . . . .(Superannuated Seaman)                Miss Graybrooke. . . . . . (Sir Joseph’s Sister)                Natalie. . . . . . . . . (Sir Joseph’s Daughter)                Lady Winwood . . . . . . . .(Sir Joseph’s Niece)                Amelia} Sophia}. (Lady Winwood’s Stepdaughter’s)                and Dorothea}           

       Period: THE PRESENT TIME. Place: ENGLAND.     

  

       FIRST SCENE     

       At Sea.     

       The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening light in the silence that is never known on land—the silence before sunrise, in a calm at sea.     

       Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the eastward sea. By fine gradations, the airy veil of morning thinned in substance as it rose—thinned, till there dawned through it in the first rays of sunlight the tall white sails of a Schooner Yacht.     

       From stem to stern silence possessed the vessel—as silence possessed the sea.     

       But one living creature was on deck—the man at the helm, dozing peaceably with his arm over the useless tiller. Minute by minute the light grew, and the heat grew with it; and still the helmsman slumbered, the heavy sails hung noiseless, the quiet water lay sleeping against the vessel’s sides. The whole orb of the sun was visible above the water-line, when the first sound pierced its way through the morning silence. From far off over the shining white ocean, the cry of a sea-bird reached the yacht on a 

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