have strange news for you," he said. "You have long mourned for your
husband and your son; but, though the old man has been dead for years,
your son, Earnest, is still alive, and is now in the harbour of
Cromarty. He is lieutenant of the vessel whose guns you must have heard
during the night."

The poor woman seemed to have lost all power of reply.

"I am a friend of Earnest's," continued the stranger; "and have come to
prepare you for meeting with him. It is now five years since his father
and he were blown off to sea by a strong gale from the land. They drove
before it for four days, when they were picked up by an armed vessel
then cruising in the North Sea, and which soon after sailed for the
coast of Spanish America. The poor old man sank under the fatigues he
had undergone; though Earnest, better able from his youth to endure
hardship, was little affected by them. He accompanied us on our Spanish
expedition--indeed, he had no choice, for we touched at no British port
after meeting with him; and, through good fortune, and what his
companions call merit, he has risen to be the second man aboard; and has
now brought home with him gold enough, from the Spaniards, to make his
old mother comfortable. He saw your light yesterevening, and steered by
it to the roadstead, blessing you all the way. Tell me, for he anxiously
wished me to inquire of you, whether Helen Henry is yet unmarried."

"It is Earnest--it is Earnest himself!" exclaimed the maiden, as she
started from the widow's bed. In a moment after she was locked in his
arms. But why dwell on a scene which I feel myself unfitted to describe?

It was ill, before evening, with old Eachen Macinla. The fatigues of the
previous day, the grief and horror of the following night, had
prostrated his energies, bodily and mental, and he now lay tossing, in a
waste apartment of the storehouse, in the delirium of a fever. The
bodies of his two sons occupied the floor below. He muttered,
unceasingly, in his ravings, of William and Earnest Beth. They were
standing beside him, he said, and every time he attempted to pray for
his poor boys and himself, the stern old man laid his cold swollen hand
on his lips.

"Why trouble me?" he exclaimed. "Why stare with your white dead eyes on
me? Away, old man! the little black shells are sticking in your gray
hairs; away to your place! Was it I who raised the wind on the sea?--was
it I?--was it I? Uh, u!--no--no, you were asleep--you were f