ot met for years before--not, I believe, since the death o' my
puir sister, when we parted such ill friends; but we are short-lived
creatures ourselves, Eachen--surely our anger should be short-lived too;
and I have come to crave from you a seat by your fire."

"William Beth," replied Eachen, "it was no wish of mine we should ever
meet; but to a seat by the fire you are welcome."

Old Macinla and his sons resumed their seats, the two fishermen took
their places fronting them, and for some time neither party exchanged a
word.

A fire, composed mostly of fragments of wreck and driftwood, threw up
its broad cheerful flame towards the roof; but so spacious was the
cavern that, except where here and there a whiter mass of stalactites,
or bolder projection of cliff stood out from the darkness, the light
seemed lost in it. A dense body of smoke, which stretched its blue level
surface from side to side, and concealed the roof, went rolling outwards
like an inverted river.

"This is but a gousty lodging-place," remarked the old fisherman, as he
looked round him; "but I have seen a worse. I wish the folk at home kent
we were half sae snug; and then the fire, too--I have always felt
something companionable in a fire, something consolable, as it were; it
appears, somehow, as if it were a creature like ourselves, and had life
in it." The remark seemed directed to no one in particular, and there
was no reply. In a second attempt at conversation, the fisherman
addressed himself to the old man.

"It has vexed me," he said, "that our young folk shouldna, for my
sister's sake, be on more friendly terms, Eachen. They hae been
quarrelling, an' I wish to see the quarrel made up." The old man,
without deigning a reply, knit his grey shaggy brows, and looked
doggedly at the fire.

"Nay, now," continued the fisherman, "we are getting auld men, Eachen,
an' wauld better bury our hard thoughts o' ane anither afore we come to
be buried ourselves. What if we were sent to the Cova Green the night,
just that we might part friends!"

Eachen fixed his keen scrutinizing glance on the speaker--it was but for
a moment; there was a tremulous motion of the under lip as he withdrew
it, and a setting of the teeth--the expression of mingled hatred and
anger; but the tone of his reply savoured more of sullen indifference
than of passion.

"William Beth," he said, "ye hae tricked my boys out o' the bit property
that suld hae come to them by their mothe