d
through their hands. They were talkative, assertive, bustling, and a
marked contrast to their gravely silent husbands.

The Fife fisherman dresses very much like a sailor--though he never
looks like one--but the Fife fisher-wife had then a distinctly foreign
look. She delighted in the widest stripes, and the brightest colors.
Flaunting calicoes and many-colored kerchiefs were her steady fashion.
Her petticoats were very short, her feet trigly shod, and while
unmarried she wore a most picturesque headdress of white muslin or
linen, set a little backward over her always luxuriant hair. Even in
her girlhood she was the epitome of power and self-reliance, and the
husband who could prevent her in womanhood from making the bargains
and handling the money, must have been an extraordinarily clever man.

I find that in representing a certain class of humanity, I have
accurately described, mentally and physically, the father and mother
of my heroine; and it is only necessary to say further that James
Ruleson was a sternly devout man. He trusted God heartily at all
hazards, and submitted himself and all he loved to the Will of God,
with that complete self-abnegation which is perhaps one of the best
fruits of a passionate Calvinism.

For a fisherman he was doubtless well-provided, but no one but his
wife, Margot Ruleson, knew the exact sum of money lying to his credit
in the Bank of Scotland; and Margot kept such knowledge strictly
private. Ruleson owned his boat, and his cottage, and both were a
little better and larger than the ordinary boat and cottage; while
Margot was a woman who could turn a penny ten times over better than
any other woman in the cottages of Culraine. Ruleson also had been
blessed with six sons and one daughter, and with the exception of the
youngest, all the lads had served their time in their father's boat,
and even the one daughter was not excused a single duty that a
fisher-girl ought to do.

Culraine was not a pretty village, though its cottages were all alike
whitewashed outside, and roofed with heather. They had but two rooms
generally--a but and a ben, with no passage between. The majority were
among the sand hills, but many were built on the lofty, sea-lashed
rocks. James Ruleson's stood on a wide shelf, too high up for the
highest waves, though they often washed away the wall of the garden,
where it touched the sandy shore.

The house stood by itself. It had its own sea, and its own sky, and