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"Oh! if God would only be good and unmake me, and let darkness cover the place where once was me! That would be like a good God! All I should be sorry for then would be, that there was not enough of me left for a dim flitting Will-o'-the-wisp of praise, ever singing my thankfulness to him that I was no more.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp, like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.

And as the chances were that they would spend a whole long day together, he would have abundant opportunity of getting to know something about the character and disposition of this new acquaintance, so that she should no longer be to him a puzzling and distracting will-o'-the-wisp.

She loved to lead him in a long, wild-goose chase across the island, dipping almost within reach one moment, losing herself at the zenith in another, alighting here and there with a will-o'-the-wisp capriciousness. Sometimes Ralph would return in such an exhausted condition that he dropped to sleep while he ate. At such times his mood was far from agreeable.

He had the sense of Jenny as all movement, as flashing and drawing him into quagmires of sensation, like a will-o'-the-wisp. Emmy was not like that. She sat tremulously smiling, humble before him, diffident, flattering. She was intelligent: that was it. Intelligent was the word. Not lively, but restful. Critically he regarded her. Rather a nice girl, Emmy....

"Well, what were you saying about me, old wife?" said grandfather, looking at his wife with the quiet fondness that comes of half-a-century of companionship. "Only that Jen there had a will-o'-the-wisp of a temper and that I knew not how she got it, for you only go about pouring oil upon the waters!"

I have lost the best friend and the noblest captain upon earth, not to mention all my little earnings, in that same confounded gulf of Westward-ho." "Yes, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's star has set in the West why not? Sun, moon, and planets sink into the West: why not the meteors of this lower world? why not a will-o'-the-wisp like me, Amyas?" "God forbid, Frank!" "Why, then?

Those enthusiasts who have thought otherwise, and who have been on the point of perfecting an apparatus which will readily and cheaply produce liquid air after the first portion is produced, are really but following the old perpetual-motion-machine will-o'-the-wisp. It does not at all follow from this, however, that the energies of liquefied air may not be utilized with enormous advantage.

"The Yanks are laying bridges" is the word that goes from mouth to mouth, and long before the day is fairly opened the nearing sounds and the will-o'-the-wisp lights out there in the fog tell the shivering pickets that the foe is more than half-way across. Daybreak brings strong forces into line along the southern bank, all eyes straining through the fog.

"Just let me spy a bit with the lantern, and I'll soon tell you everything." He bobbed back and forth for a moment or two like a will-o'-the-wisp. "Now turn sharp to the left, and follow the light." A great hope sprung up in my heart, and I hushed Winnie's and Bobsey's crying by saying, "Listen, and you'll soon hear some good news."