arbor.

The men were soon staggering down to the boats with the nets, coiling
them up in apparently endless fashion, and as they were loaded they
were very hard to get into the boats, and harder still to get out.
Just as the sun began to set, the oars were dipped, and the boats
swept out of the harbor into the bay, and there they set their
red-barked sails, and stood out for the open sea.

Ruleson's boat led the way, because it was Ruleson's boat that had
found the fish, and Christine stood at the pier-edge cheering her
strong, brave father, and not forgetting a smile and a wave of her
hand for the handsome Cluny at the tiller. To her these two
represented the very topmost types of brave and honorable humanity.
The herring they were seeking were easily found, for it was the Grand
Shoal, and it altered the very look of the ocean, as it drove the
water before it in a kind of flushing ripple. Once, as the boats
approached them, the shoal sank for at least ten minutes, and then
rose in a body again, reflecting in the splendid sunset marvelous
colors and silvery sheen.

With a sweet happiness in her heart, Christine went slowly home. She
did not go into the village, she walked along the shore, over the wet
sands to the little gate, which opened upon their garden. On her way
she passed the life-boat. It was in full readiness for launching at a
moment's notice, and she went close to it, and patted it on the bow,
just as a farmer's daughter would pat the neck of a favorite horse.

"Ye hae saved the lives of men," she said. "God bless ye, boatie!" and
she said it again, and then stooped and looked at a little brass plate
screwed to the stern locker, on which were engraved these words:

Put your trust in God,
And do your best.

And as she climbed the garden, she thought of the lad who had left
Culraine thirty years ago, and gone to Glasgow to learn ship building,
and who had given this boat to his native village out of his first
savings. "And it has been a lucky boat," she said softly, "every year
it has saved lives," and then she remembered the well-known melody,
and sang joyously--

"Weel may the keel row,
And better may she speed,
Weel may the keel row,
That wins the bairnies' bread.

"Weel may the keel row,
Amid the stormy strife,
Weel may the keel row
That saves the sailor's life.

"God bless the Life-Boat!
In the stormy strife,
Saving drowning men,
On the seas o' F