an, if we never made mistakes. But in spite
of mistakes, men live contented with the world, and happy with each
other."

CHAPTER VIII

AN UNEXPECTED MARRIAGE

The tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.

The little enthusiasm incident to Neil's success did not last long,
for

Joy's the shyest bird,
Mortal ever heard,
Listen rapt and silent when he sings;
Do not seek to see,
Less the vision be
But a flutter of departing wings.

And if it is not tightly clasped, and well guarded, it soon fades
away, especially if doubt or question come near it. The heart, which
is never weary of recalling its sorrows, seems to have no echo for its
finer joys. This, however, may be our own fault. Let us remember for a
moment or two how ruthlessly we transfer yesterday into today, and
last week into this week. We have either no time or no inclination to
entertain joys that have passed. They are all too quickly retired
from our working consciousness, to some dim, little-visited nook in
our memory. And taken broadly, this is well. Life is generally
precious, according to the strength and rapidity of its flow, and
change is the splendid surge of a life of this kind. A perfect life is
then one full of changes. It is also a safe life, for it is because
men have no changes, that they fear not God.

Now the people of this little fishing village had lives lined with
change. Sudden deaths were inevitable, when life was lived on an
element so full of change and peril as the great North Sea. Accidents
were of daily occurrence. Loss of boats and nets reduced families to
unlooked-for poverty. Sons were constantly going away to strange seas
and strange countries, and others, who had been to the Arctic Ocean,
or the ports of Australia, coming back home. The miracle of the son's
being dead and being alive again, was not infrequently repeated.
Indeed all the tragedies and joys of life found their way to this
small hamlet, hidden among the rocks and sand dunes that guard the
seas of Fife.

Margot's triumph was very temporary. It was not of the ordinary kind.
It had in it no flavor of the sea, and the lad who had won his honors
had never identified himself with the fishers of Culraine. He did not
intend to live among them, and they had a salutary fear of the law,
and no love for it. As a general thing neither the men nor