the Virgin placed in a niche over the
fireplace. Whenever they saw him look in this
direction Gabriel and the young girl shuddered
and crossed themselves; and even the child
who still kept awake imitated their example.
There was one bond of feeling at Ieast between
the old man and his grandchildren, which
connected his age and their youth unnaturally
and closely together. This feeling was
reverence for the superstitions which had been
handed down to them by their ancestors
from centuries and centuries back, as far
even as the age of the Druids. The spirit-
warnings of disaster and death which the
old man heard in the wailing of the wind,
in the crashing of the waves, in the dreary
monotonous rattling of the casement, the
young man and his affianced wife and the
little child who cowered by the fire-side,
heard too. All differences in sex, in temperament,
in years, Superstition was strong enough
to strike down to its own dread level, in the
fisherman's cottage, on that stormy night.

Besides the benches by the fire-side and the
bed, the only piece of furniture in the room
was a coarse wooden table, with a loaf of
black bread, a knife, and a pitcher of cider
placed on it. Old nets, coils of rope, tattered
sails, hung about the walls and over the
wooden partition which separated the room
into two compartments. Wisps of straw
and ears of barley drooped down through the
rotten rafters and gaping boards that made
the floor of the granary above.

These different objects and the persons in the
cottage,who composed the only surviving
members of the fisherman's family, were strangely
and wildly lit up by the blaze of the fire and
by the still brighter glare of a resin torch stuck
into a block of wood in the chimney corner.
The red and yellow light played full on the
weird face of the old man as he lay opposite
to it, and glanced fitfully on the figures of
Rose, Gabriel, and the two children; the
great gloomy shadows rose and fell, and grew
and lessened in bulk about the walls like
visions of darkness, animated by a super-
natural spectre-life, while the dense obscurity
outside spreading before the curtainless
window seemed as a wall of solid darkness
that had closed in for ever around the fisherman's
house. The night-scene within the
cottage was almost as wild and as dreary to
look upon as the night scene without.

For a long time the different persons in the
room sat together without speaking, even
without looking at each other. At last, the
girl turned and whispered something into
Gabriel's ear.

"Rose, what were you saying to Gabriel?"
asked the child opposite, seizing the first
opportunity of breaking the desolate silence
—doubly desolate at her age—which was
preserved by all around her.

"I was telling him," answered Rose simply,
"that it was time to change the bandages on
his arm; and I also said to him, what I have
often said before, that he must never play
at that terrible game of the Soule again."

The old man had been looking intently at
Rose and his grandchild as they spoke. His
harsh, hollow voice mingled with the last
soft tones of the young girl, repeating over
and over again the same terrible words:
"Drowned! drowned! Son and grandson,
both drowned! both drowned!"

"Hush! Grandfather," said Gabriel, "we
must not lose all hope for them yet. God
and the Blessed Virgin protect them!" He
looked at the little delf image, and crossed
himself; the others imitated him, except the
old man. He still tossed his hands over the
coverlid, and still repeated "Drowned!
drowned!"

"Oh that accursed Soule!" groaned the
young man. "But for this wound I should
have been with my father. The poor boy's
life might at least have been saved; for we
should then have left him here."

"Silence!" exclaimed the harsh voice from
the bed. "The wail of dying men rises louder
than the loud sea; the devil's psalm-singing
roars higher than the roaring wind! Be
silent, and listen! François drowned! Pierre
drowned! Hark! Hark!"

A terrific blast of wind burst over the
house, as he spoke, shaking it to its centre,
overpowering all other sounds, even to the
deafening crash of the waves. The slumbering
child awoke, and uttered a scream of fear.
Rose, who had been kneeling before her lover
binding the fresh bandages on his wounded
arm, paused in her occupation, trembling
from head to foot. Gabriel looked towards
the window: his experience told him what
must be the hurricane fury of that blast of
wind out at sea, and he sighed bitterly as he
murmured to himself "God help them both—
man's help will be as nothing to them now!"

"Gabriel!" cried the voice from the bed
in altered tones—very faint and trembling.

He did not hear, or did not attend to the
old man. He was trying to soothe and
encourage the trembling girl at his feet. "Don't
be frightened, love," he said, kissing her very
gently and tenderly on the forehead. "You
are as safe here as anywhere. Was I not
right in saying that it would be madness to
attempt taking you back to the farm-house
this evening? You can sleep in that room,
Rose, when you are tired—you can sleep
with the two girls."

"Gabriel! brother Gabriel!" cried one of
the children. "O! look at grandfather!"

Gabriel ran to the bedside. The old man
had raised himself into a sitting position; his
eyes were dilated, his whole face was rigid
with terror, his hands were stretched out
convulsively towards his grandson. "The
White Women!" he screamed. "The White
Women; the grave-diggers of the drowned
are out on the sea!" The children, with
cries of terror, flung themselves into Rose's
arms; even Gabriel uttered an exclamation