pen boat live in a night like this?"

There seemed something magical in the communication--something that
awakened all the sympathies of the poor bereaved woman; and she felt she
could forgive him every unkindness.

"Wae's me!" she exclaimed, "it was in such a night as this, an' scarcely
sae wild, that my Earnest perished." The old man groaned and wrung his
hands.

In one of the pauses of the hurricane, there was a gun heard from the
sea, and shortly after a second. "Some puir vessel in distress," said
the widow; "but, alas! where can succour come frae in sae terrible a
night? There is help only in Ane. Wae's me! would we no better light up
a blaze on the floor, an', dearest Helen, draw off the cover frae the
window. My puir Earnest has told me that my light has aften shewed him
his bearing frae the deadly bed o' Dunskaith. That last gun"--for a
third was now heard booming over the mingled roar of the sea and the
wind--"that last gun came frae the very rock edge. Wae's me, wae's me!
maun they perish, an' sae near!" Helen hastily lighted a bundle of more
fir, that threw up its red, sputtering blaze half-way to the roof, and,
dropping the covering, continued to wave it opposite the window. Guns
were still heard at measured intervals, but apparently from a safer
offing; and the last, as it sounded faintly against the wind, came
evidently from the interior of the bay.

"She has escaped," said the old man; "it's a feeble hand that canna do
good when the heart is willing--but what has mine been doing a' life
long?" He looked at the widow and shuddered.

Towards morning, the wind fell, and the moon, in her last quarter, rose
red and glaring out of the Frith, lighting the melancholy roll of the
waves, that still came like mountains, and the broad white belt of surf
that skirted the shores. The old fisherman left the cottage, and
sauntered along the beach. It was heaped with huge wreaths of kelp and
tangle uprooted by the storm, and in the hollow of the rocky bay lay the
scattered fragments of a boat. Eachen stooped to pick up a piece of the
wreck, in the fearful expectation of finding some known mark by which to
recognise it, when the light fell full on the swollen face of a corpse
that seemed staring at him from out a wreath of weed. It was that of his
eldest son. The body of the younger, fearfully gashed and mangled by the
rocks, lay a few yards farther to the east.

The morning was as pleasant as the night had been boi