ho spend such nights may well call caller herrin' "the
lives o' men"!

In the misty daylight, the men and the boats came into harbor, but the
nets in every boat--each net about eight hundred and fifty yards
long--were totally lost. However, the herring season was practically
over. Indeed, the men were at the point of exhaustion, for the total
take had been very large, and there is scarcely any human labor more
severe on the physical endurance, than the fishing for caller
herrin'.

It was just at this time that Neil Ruleson had to leave Culraine for
Aberdeen. He was to finish his course at the Maraschal College this
year, and never before had he gone there so well provided, and
never before had he felt so poor. For though he had received the
unlooked-for sum of two hundred pounds for his services, he felt
it to be unequal to his ambitious requirements, six weeks at
Ballister House having taught him to regard many little comforts as
absolute necessities.

"I am very nearly a lawyer now," he reflected, "a professional man,
and I must try and look like it, and live like it. The bare room and
unfashionable clothing of the past must be changed to more respectable
quarters, and more appropriate garments." Of course he knew that
Christine would not permit him to injure his future fine prospects,
but he had promised to repay the ninety pounds he had borrowed from
her out of his first earnings, and he felt that the money was now due,
and that he ought to pay it. But if he did so, he must simplify all
his plans, and he had taken so much pleasure and pains in arranging
the surroundings of his last session, that he was exceedingly loth to
surrender even the least important of them.

While he was packing his trunk, and deliberating on this subject, the
great storm came, and his father barely saved the boat and the lives
of the men in her. The nets were gone, and his mother asked him
plainly if he could not help his father to replace them.

"I will do so gladly, Mother," he answered, "when I have paid my
college fees, and the like, I will see what I can spare--there is
Christine's money!" he continued, in a troubled, thoughtful
manner--and Margot answered,

"Ay, to be sure. If Christine hadna loaned you her money, it would hae
been at her feyther's will and want, this moment, but if you are going
to keep your word, and pay Christine out o' your first earnings,
there's nae need to talk wi' you. Christine will help your feyther