Read the book: «She's All the World to Me», page 4

CHAPTER IX
THE HERRING MEAILLEY

There was high sport at the "Jolly Herrings" that night. Christian was there, more than half ashamed of his surroundings, but too amiably irresolute, as usual, to imperil by absence from this annual gathering his old reputation for good-fellowship.

"Aw, the gentleman he is, isn't he? And him straight from Oxford College, too."

"What's that they're sayin'? Oxford College? Och, no; not that at all."

"But the fine English tongue at him, anyway. It's just a pleasure to hear him spake. Smooth as oil, and sweet astonishin'. Bill Kisseck – I say, Bill, there – why didn't you put up the young masther for the chair?"

"Aw, lave me alone," answered Kisseck, with a contemptuous toss of the head. "Him an' me's same as brothers."

"Bill's proud uncommon of the masther, and middlin' jealous too. Aw, well! who's wonderin' at it?"

"It's a bit free them chaps are making," whispered Kisseck to Christian. Then rising to his feet with gravity, "Gentlemen," he said, "what d'ye say to Misther Christian Mylrea Balladhoo for the elber-chair yander?"

"Hooraa! Hooraa!"

Kisseck resumed his seat with a lofty glance of patronage at the men about him, which said, as plainly as words themselves, "I tould ye to lave it all to me."

"Proud, d'ye say? Look at him," whispered Davy Cain.

The "Jolly Herrings" was perhaps the most ludicrous and incongruous house of entertainment of which history records any veracious record. It was a very gargoyle on the fair fabric of the earth, except that it served the opposite uses of attracting rather than banishing the evil spirits about it. Thirty-five years ago it was to be found near the bottom of the narrow, crabbed little thoroughfare that winds and twists and descends to that part of the quay which overlooks the ruins of the castle. The gloomy pothouse was entered by a little porch. Two steps down led you into a room that was half parlor and half bar, and where only the fumes of tobacco-smoke were usually visible. Two more steps led you to an inner and much larger room, that was practically kitchen, living room, and room of special entertainment. This was the apartment in which the herring supper was always given. What a paradox the place was! All that belonged to the room itself was of the rudest and meanest kind. The floor was paved with stones, the walls were sparsely plastered, the ceiling was the bare wood hewn straight from the tree. But over these indications of poverty there was an extraordinary display of curious wealth. The little window behind Christian in his "elber-chair" was glazed with a rich piece of stained glass that had the Madonna and child for subject. The elbow-chair itself was of old oak deeply carved and bound with clamps of engraved brass. Bill Kisseck, who by virtue of his office sat at the opposite end of the table, occupied a small settee covered with gorgeous crimson velvet. On the mantelpiece were huddled in luxurious confusion sundry brass censers, medieval lamps, and an ivory crucifix. On the wall, and beside a piece of marble carved with a medallion, hung a skate that had been cut open to dry. A pair of bellows lay on an antique chest in the ingle. Into the mouth of the censers a bundle of pipe-lights had been methodically arranged. A ponderous silver watch hung round the arms of the crucifix, and a frying-pan was suspended in the recess of the window that was consecrated to the Madonna.

Such was the kitchen and stateroom of the "Jolly Herrings"; end no apartment ever spoke more plainly to those who had ears to hear of the character and habits of its owners. The house was kept by a woman who was thin, wrinkled, and blear-eyed; and by a man who was equally thin and no less wrinkled, but had quick, suspicious eyes, and a few spiky gray hairs about the chin that resembled the whiskers of a cat. As husband and wife this couple hold the little pot-house; but long years after the events now being narrated, it was discovered that husband and wife had both been women.

What sport! What noisy laughter! What singing and rollicking cheers! The men stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, their sitting nor their standing. They wore their caps or not as pleased them, they sang or talked as suited them, they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or snarled, were noisy or silent precisely as the whim of the individual prescribed the Individual rule of manners. The chair at the "Jolly Herrings" was a position of more distinction than duty, and it was numbered among Christian's virtues that he had never attempted to exercise an arbitrary control over the liberties of free-born Manxmen. Jest or jeer, fun or fight, were alike free of the gathering where he presided; but everything had to be in conscience and reason, for Christian drew the line rigidly at marline-spikes and belaying pins.

Tommy-Bill-beg was there, and a fine scorn sat on his face. The reason of this was that, as a mistaken tribute to music, Jemmy Balladhoo had also been invited, and was sitting with his fiddle directly in front of the harbor-master, though that worthy disdained to take notice of the humiliating proximity. Danny Fayle was there. The lad sat quietly and meekly on a form near the door.

The supper was lifted direct on to the table from the pans and boilers that simmered on the hearth. First came the broth well loaded with barley and cabbage, but not destitute of the flavor of two sheep's heads. Then the suet pudding, round as a well-fed salmon and as long as a twenty-pound cod. After this came three legs of boiled mutton and a square block of roast beef. Last of all the frying-pan was taken from the niche of the Madonna, and two or three dozen of fresh herrings were made to frizzle and crackle and bark and sputter over the fire.

Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil lamp with its open mouth – a relic, perhaps, of some monkish sanctuary of the Middle Ages – was lifted from the mantelpiece and put on the table for the receipt of customs; the censer with the spills was placed beside it, pipes emerged from the waistcoat pockets, and pots of liquor with glasses and bottles came in from the outer bar.

"Is it heavy on the beer you're going to be, Bill?" said Davy Cain.

Kisseck replied with a superior smile and the lifting up of a whisky bottle from which he had just drawn the cork.

Then came the toasts. The chairman rose, amid "Hip, hip, hooraa," to give "Life to man and death to fish." Kisseck gave "Death to the head that never wore hair," Tommy-Bill-beg responded to loud requests for "The Ladies." He reminded the company then, with some pardonable discursiveness, he said he was "terrible glad" to have the fleet around Peel, and not away in those outlandish foreign parts, Kinsale and Scotland; for when they were there he felt like the chairman's namesake, Christian, in the "Pilgrim's Progress." "And what is it he is saying in the good ould Book?" exclaimed Tommy? – "'My occipation's gone!'"

Then came more liquor and some singing. Christian sang too. He sang "Black-Eyed Sue," amid audible sobs.

"The voice he has, anyway; and the loud it is, and the tender, and the way he sliddhers up and down, and no squeaks and jumps; no, no, nothin' lek squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow by pullin' the tail at her, and a sorter of a rippin' up her innards to get the hook out of her gills."

"Aw, lovely he sang – lovely, uncommon."

"Well, I tould you so. I allis said it."

Kisseck listened to this dialogue at his end of the table with a lofty smile. "It's nothin'," he said, condescendingly. "That's nothin'. You should hear him out on the boat, when we're lyin' at anchor, and me and him together, and the stars just makin' a peep, and the moon, and the mar-fire, and all to that, and me and him lyin' aft and smokin' and havin' a glass maybe; but nothin' to do no harm at all – that's when you should hear him."

"More liquor there," shouted Tommy-Bill-beg, climbing with difficulty to his feet – "more liquor for the chair. And for some one beside – is that what they're saying? Well, look here! bad sess to it – of coorse, some for me too. It's terrible good for the narves, and they're telling me it's mortal good for studdyin' the vice. What's that from the chair? Enemy – eh? Confound it, that's true, though. What's that it's saying – 'Who's fool enough to put the enemy into his mouth to stale away his brains?' Aw, now, it's the good ould Book that's fine at summin' it all up."

Still more liquor, and Jemmy Balladhoo comes forth with his fiddle. Immediate and complete capitulation of Tommy-Bill-beg ensues. The harbor-master never yet heard a squeak from his rival's fiddle; but the bare idea that Jemmy Quark Balladhoo should play it was really of itself too ridiculous.

"Aw, the rispen and the raspen. It's the moo of a cow he's on for making now. No? Then it's the sweet hoot of the donkey. Not that? Och, then it's safe to be the grunt of Jemmy's ould pig, anyways."

The violinist had by this time finished an elaborate movement, and called on the chairman to tell the company what it was. Christian, who had been hard put-to to preserve his gravity during the extraordinary musical display, and had not the very vaguest idea of what it was supposed to stand for, thought to get out of the difficulty by flattering the performer. "Oh, that? – what's that you say? – oh, of course – why that's, of course, the Pastoral Symphony from the 'Messiah.'"

"Not at all," shouted the irate fiddler, "it's 'Rule Britannia!'"

Still more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of both in the vicinity of the chair. Kisseck, who had drunk heavily, struggled his way to the head of the table.

There were several strangers present, for it was the custom to welcome as many of the Cornish, Irish, or Scotch fishermen as happened to be at Peel and cared to join in the dubious thanksgiving, in the form of a noisy orgie. Among the rest was a young fellow in oil-skins and a glengarry, which, being several sizes too big for him, fell low over his forehead and almost covered his eyes. He sat near to Christian, drank little, and spoke not at all. When Kisseck made his way to Christian's side he had to pass this stranger. "Who have we here at all?" he said, trying to tip up the glengarry. The young fellow's well-timed jerk of the head defeated Kisseck's tipsy intention.

"Aw, Christian, man," said Kisseck in a whisper that was scarcely pitched with prudent moderation even in that tumultuous assembly, "it's a nice nate berth I've found for us at last – nice, extraordinary." Christian motioned his head in the direction of the young stranger; but heedless of the warning Kisseck continued, "No need goin' messin' around graves in the ould castle and all to that. And it isn't religious as you were sayin', and I'm one that stands up for religion, and singin' hymns at whiles, and a bit of a spell at the ould Book sometimes. Aw, yes, though I am – (Louder.) Look here! D'ye hear down yander. Give us a swipe of them sperrits. Right. Let us fill up your glass, Christian. (Coming closer.) Aw, as I was sayin', it's in the Poolvash – Lockjaw they're callin' it now, and as nate for stowin' a box of tay or a roll of silk or lace, or maybe a keg of brandy, and no one never knowin' nothin'."

The young fellow in oil-skins had dropped his empty pewter at that moment, and it rolled behind Christian's chair. As he stooped to recover it the chairman wheeled round to give him room, and coming up again, their eyes met for an instant. Christian made a perceptible start. "Strange at least," he muttered to himself.

More liquor and yet more, till the mouth of the monastic lamp ran over with chinking coin.

"Silence!" shouted Bill Kisseck, struggling up to speak. "Aisy there! Here's to Christian Mylrea Balladhoo; and when he gets among them Kays I'm calkerlatin' it'll be all up with the lot o' them, and their laws agen honest tradin', and their by-laws agen the countin' of the herrin', and their new copper money, and all the rest of their messin'. What d'ye say, men? And what's that you're grinnin' and winkin' at, Davy Cain? It's middlin' free you're gettin' with the masther anyhow, and if it wasn't for me he wouldn't bemane himself by comin' among the lek of you, singin' and makin' aisy. Chaps, fill up your glasses, every man of you, d'ye hear? Here's to the best gentleman in the island, bar none – hip, hip, hooraa!"

Among the few who had not responded with becoming alacrity to Kisseck's request was the young stranger. Observing this as he shuffled back to his seat, Kisseck reached over and struck at the glengarry, which tumbled on the floor, and revealed a comely face and a rich mass of auburn hair. The stranger rose at this indignity and made his way to the door. When he got there Danny Fayle, who was leaning against the door-jamb, looked closely into his face and reeled back with a startled cry. The stranger was gone the next instant.

"See yander. What's agate of the lad?" cried Kisseck. And every one turned to Danny, whose cheeks were as pale as death. "What's it that's ailin' you at all?" shouted Kisseck.

"I – I thought it was – was – a woman," stammered Danny, with eyes still fixed on the door.

Loud peals of laughter followed. But wait – what was now going on at the head of the table? When the stranger rose, Christian had risen too. It was the moment to respond to the toast, but Christian glared wildly about him with a tongue that seemed to cleave to his mouth. His glass fell from his fingers. Every eye was fixed on his face. That face quivered and turned white. Laughter died away on the lip, and the voices were hushed. At last Christian spoke. His words came slowly, and fell on the ear like the clank of a chain across snow.

"Men," he said, "you've been drinking my health. You call me a good fellow. That's wrong. I'm the worst man among you." (Murmurs of dissent and some faint smiles of incredulity.) "Bill says I'm going to the House of Keys one of these days. That's wrong too. Shall I tell you where I am going?" (Christian put one hand up to his head; you could see the throbbing of his temples.) "Shall I tell you?" he cried in a hollow voice and with staring eyes; "I'm going to the devil," and amid the breathless silence he dropped back in his seat and buried his head in his hands.

No one spoke. The fair hair lay on the table among broken pipes and the refuse of spilled beer. Then every man rose to his feet. There could be no more drinking to-night. One after one shambled out. In two minutes the room was empty except for the stricken man, who lay there with hidden face, and Danny Fayle, who, with a big glistening tear in his eye, was stroking the tangled curls.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Strange now, wasn't it? – strange, uncommon! He's been heavy on the beer lately they're tellin' me. Well, well, it isn't right, and him a gentleman. Not lek as if he was one of us."

"And goin' to be a parson, too, so they're sayin'. It's middlin' wicked anyway, and no disrepec'. Oie Vie! Good-night!"

"Pazon, is it?" says Tommy-Bill-beg. "Never a pazon will they make of his mother's son. What's that they're sayin', 'Never no duck wasn't hatched by a drake.'"

CHAPTER X
"THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA"

Two months passed away, and the mists from the sea were chased by the winds of winter. It was the twenty-third of December. In the two days that followed between that day and Christmas morning occurred the whole series of appalling events which it now remains to us to narrate.

Mona Cregeen and Danny Fayle, with Ruby between them, were walking along the shore from Orry's Head toward the south. The little one prattled and sang, shook out her hair in the wind, and flew down the sand; ran back and clasped a hand of each; and dragged Danny aside to look at this sea-weed, or pulled Mona along to look at that shell; tripped down to the water's edge until the big waves touched her boots, and then back once more with a half-frightened, half-affected laughter-loaded scream.

Mona was serious and even sad, and Danny wore a dejected look in his simple face which added a melancholy interest to its vacant expression. Since we saw him first in the house of Mylrea Balladhoo, Danny had passed through a bitter experience. There was no tangible sorrow, yet who shall measure the depth of his suffering?

When the new element of love first entered into Danny's life, he knew nothing of what it was. A glance out of woman's eyes had in an instant penetrated his nature. He was helpless and passive. He would stand for an hour neither thinking nor feeling, but with a look of sheer stupidity. If this was love, Danny knew it by no such name. But presently a ray of sunlight floated into the lad's poor, dense intelligence and everything around was bathed in a new, glad light. The vacant look died away from his face. He smiled and laughed. He ran here and there with a jovial willingness. Even Kisseck's sneers and curses, his threats and blows became all at once easier to bear. "Be aisy with me, Uncle Bill," he would say; "be aisy, uncle, and I'll do it smart and quick astonishin'." People marked the change. "It's none so daft the lad is at all, at all," they said sometimes. This was the second stage of Danny's passion – and presently came the third. Then arose a vague yearning not only to love but to be loved. The satisfied heart had not asked so much before, but now it needed this further sustenance. Curious and pathetic were the simple appeals made by Danny for the affection of the woman he loved. Sometimes he took up a huge fish to the cottage of the Cregeens, threw it on the floor, and vanished. Sometimes he talked to Mona of what great things he had done in his time – what fish he had caught, how fast he had rowed, and what weather he had faced. There was not a lad in Peel more modest than Danny, but his simple soul was struggling in this way with a desire to make itself seem worthy of Mona's love. The girl would listen in silence to the accounts of his daring deeds, and when she would look up with a glance of pity into his animated eyes, the eyes of Danny would be brave no more, but fall in confusion to his feet.

Then, bit by bit, it was borne in on Danny that his great, strong, simple love could never be returned; and this was the last stage of his affection. The idea of love had itself been hard to realize, but much harder to understand was the strange and solemn idea of unrequited passion. Twenty times had Mona tried in vain to convey this idea to his mind without doing violence to the tenderness of the lad's nature. But that which no artifice could achieve time itself accomplished. Danny began to stay away from the cottage on the "brew," and when, in pity for that unspeakable sorrow which Mona herself knew but too well, the girl asked him why he did not come up as often as before, he answered, "I'm thinking it's not me you're wanting up there." And Danny felt as if the words would choke him.

Then the whole world, which had seemed brighter, or at least less cruel, became bathed in gloom. The lad haunted the seashore. The moan of the long dead sea seemed to speak to him in a voice not indeed of cheer but of comforting grief. The white curves of the breakers had something in them that suited better with his mood than the sunlit ripples of a summer sea. The dapple-gray clouds that scudded across the leaden sky, the chill wind that scattered the salt spray and whistled along the gunwale of his boat, the mist, the scream of the sea-bird – all these spoke to his desolate heart in an inarticulate language that was answered by tears.

Poor Danny, a hurricane had uprooted the only idol of your soul, and for you the one flower of life, the flower of love, was torn up and withered forever!

Love? Yes, even the image of a happy love had at length stood up for one moment before his mind, even before his mind. That love itself might have been possible to him, yes, possible to such a one as he was, though laughed at – "rigged" as he called it – here, there, and everywhere – this was the blessed vision of one brief instant. He thought of how he might have clasped her hands by the bright sea, and looked lovingly into her eyes. But no, no, no; not for him had God sent the gracious love, and Danny turned in his dumb despair to the cold winter sea, shrinking from every human face.

"Is there not a storm coming?" said Mona to Danny, as she and Ruby overtook the boy on the shore that morning.

"Ay, the long cat's tail was going off at a slant a while ago, and now the round thick skate yonder is hanging very low."

As he spoke, Danny turned about and looked at the clouds which we have been taught to know by less homely names.

"Danny, Danny," interrupted the little one, "what is that funny thing you told me the sailors say when the wind is getting up?"

"'Davy's putting on the coppers for the parson,'" answered the lad, absently, and without the semblance of a smile. For the twentieth time Ruby laughed and crowed over the dubious epigram.

Mona glanced sometimes at Danny's listless face as they walked together along the shore with the child between them. His look was dull and at certain moments even silly. Once she thought she saw a tear glistening in his eye, but he had turned his head away in an instant. There were moments when her heart bled for him. People thought her harsh and even cynical. "Aw, allis cowld and freezin' is the air she keeps about her," they would say. Perhaps some bitter experience of the past had not a little to do with this. Nothing so sure to petrify the warmer sensibilities as neglect and wrong. But in the presence of Danny's silent sorrow the girl's heart melted, and the almost habitual upward curve at one corner of her mouth disappeared. She knew something of his suffering. She could read it in her own. At some thrilling moment, if Heaven had so ordered it, they two, she and this simple lad, might have uncovered to the other the bleeding wound that each carried hidden in the breast. And that great moment was yet to come, though she knew it not.

Love is a selfish thing, let us say what we will of it besides.

"Danny," said Mona, "have you seen anything more of Christian?"

"Yes," said the lad. Some momentary remorse on Mona's part compelled her to glance into Danny's face. There was no trace of feeling there. It was baffled love, and not jealousy, that had taken the joy out of Danny's life. And as yet the lad had not once reflected that if Mona did not love him it was, perhaps, because she loved another.

"He isn't going," continued Danny.

"Thank God," said Mona, fervently. "And Kisseck, does he still mean to go?"

"Ay, of coorse he's going. It'll be to-morrow, it seems. I'm to go, too."

"Danny, you must not go," said Mona, dropping Ruby's hand to take hold of the lad's arm. He glanced up vacantly.

"Seems to me it doesn't matter much what I do," he said.

"But it does matter, Danny. What these men are attempting is crime – black, cruel, pitiless crime – murder, no less."

"That's what the young masther was sayin'," answered the lad, absently; "and the one of them hadn't a word to say agen it."

Ruby had tripped away for a moment. Returning with a little oval thing in her hand, she cried, "Danny, what's this? I found it under a stone, and its gills were shining like fire."

"A sea-mouse," said the lad, and taking it out of the child's hand, he added, "I'm less nor this worm to our Bill."

"Danny, would it hurt you much if you were to hear that your uncle Kisseck was being punished?"

The lad lifted his eyes with a bewildered stare. The idea that Bill Kisseck could be punished had never really come to him as within the limits of possibility. Once, indeed, he had thought of something that he might himself do, but the wild notion had vanished with the next glance at Kisseck's face.

"He could be punished," said Mona, "and must be."

Then Danny's eyes glittered and looked strange, but he said not a word. They walked on, the happy child once more taking a hand from each, and laughing, prattling, leaping, and making little runs between them. Ruby was in a deeper sense the link that bound them, and in the deepest sense of all she was the link that held them apart forever. They had walked to the mouth of the harbor, and Mona held out her hand to say good-bye. Danny looked beyond her over the sea. There was something in his face that Mona had never before seen there. What it meant she knew not then, except that in a moment he had grown to look old. "The storm is coming," said Mona. "I see the diver out at sea. Do you hear his wild note?"

"Ay, and ye see Mother Carey's chicken yonder," said Danny, pointing where the stormy petrel was scudding close to a white wave and uttering a dismal cry. Then, absently and in a low tone, "I think at whiles I'd like to die in a big sea like that," said the lad.

Mona looked for a moment in silence into the lad's hopeless eyes. Danny turned back with his hand in his pockets and his face toward the sand.

Truly a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terrible than wind and rain.

Mona and Ruby continued their walk. It was the slack season at the factory, and Mr. Kinvig's jewel in looms was compelled to stand idle three working days out of the six. The young woman and the child passed down the quay to the bridge, crossed to the foot of the Horse Hill, and walked along the south side of the harbor – now full of idle luggers – toward Contrary Head. When they reached the narrow strait which cut off the Castle Isle from the mainland, they took a path that led upward over Contrary Head. A little way up the hill they passed Bill Kisseck's cottage. The house stood on a wild headland, and faced nothing but the ruined castle and the open sea. An old quarry had once been worked on the spot, and Kisseck's cottage stood with its front to what must have been the level cutting, and its back to the straight wall of rock. A path wound round the house and came close to the edge of the little precipice. Mona took this path, and as they walked past the back part of the roof a woman's head looked out of a little dormered window that stood in the thatch.

"Good-morning, Bridget," said Mona, cheerfully.

"Good-mornin'," answered Bridget, morosely. "It's middlin' cowld, isn't it, missis, for you and that poor babby to be walkin' up there?"

"It's a sharp morning, but we're strong and well, Ruby and I," said Mona, going on.

"The craythur!" mumbled Bridget to herself when they were gone, "it's not lookin' like it she is anyway, with a face as white as a haddick."

Mona and the little one walked briskly along the path, which from Kisseck's cottage was nearly level, and cut across the Head toward the south. There was a second path a few yards below them, and between these two, at a distance of some five or six hundred yards from the house, was the open shaft of an old disused lead mine which has since been filled up.

"What a dreadful pit," said Ruby, clinging to Mona's skirts in the wind. They continued their walk until they came to a steep path that led down to a little bay. Then they paused, and looked back, around, and beneath. Overhead were the drifting black clouds, heavy, wide, and low. Behind was the Horse Hill, purple to the summit with gorse. To the north was the Castle Island, with its Fennella's Tower against the sky, and the black rocks, fringed at the water's edge with white spray. Beneath was the narrow covelet cleft out of the hillside, and apparently accessible only from the sea. In front was the ocean, whose moan came up to them mingled with the shrill cry of the long-necked birds that labored midway in the burdened air.

"What is the name of that pretty bay?" asked the child. "Poolvash," answered Mona.

"And what does it mean?" asked the little one.

"The Bay of Death," said Mona; "that's what they used to call it long ago, but they call it the Lockjaw now."

"And what does that mean?" asked Ruby again, with a child's tireless curiosity.

"It means, I suppose, that the tide comes up into it, and then no one can get either in or out."

"Oh, what a pity! Look at the lovely shells in the shingle," said Ruby.

Just then a step was heard on the path below, and in a moment Bill Kisseck came up beside them. He looked suspiciously at Mona and passed without a word.

"That gel of Kinvig's is sniffin' round," he said to his wife when he reached home. "She wouldn't be partikler what she'd do if she got a peep and a skute into anything."

"Didn't you say no one could get up or down the Lockjaw when the tide is up?" asked Ruby as she tripped home at Mona's side.

"Yes," said Mona, "except from the sea."

"And isn't the tide up now?" said Ruby. Mona did not answer.

That night the storm that Danny had predicted from the aspect of the "cat's tail" and the "skate" broke over Peel with terrific violence. When morning dawned it was found that barns had been unroofed and that luggers in the harbor had been torn from their moorings. The worst damage done was to the old wooden pier and the little wooden lighthouse. These had been torn entirely away, and nothing remained but the huge stone foundations which were visible now at the bottom of the ebb tide. The morning was clear and fine, the wind had dropped, and only the swelling billows in the bay and the timbers floating on every side remained to tell of last night's tempest.

Little Ruby was early stirring, and before Mona and her mother were awake she ran down the hill toward Peel. An hour passed and the little one had not returned. Two hours went by, and Mona could see no sign of the child from the corner of the road. Then she became anxious, and went in search of her.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Gerr out of this and take the boat round to the Lockjaw, d'ye hear?" shouted Bill Kisseck, "and see if any harm's been done down there. Take a rope or two and that tarpaulin and cover up anything that's wet."

Danny lifted the tarpaulin, and went quietly out of the house.

"I'll never make nothin' of that lad," said Kisseck; "he hasn't a word to chuck at a dog."