cathedral stood and lived; the little leaves
slumbered yet lived; and the story floated and lived, in the potable
gold of summer afternoon.

To look at this painted poem was to feel a thrill of pleasure in bare
existence; it went through the eyes, where paintings stop, and warmed
the depths and recesses of the heart with its sunshine and its glorious
air.

CHAPTER XIII.

"WHAT is in the wind this dark night? Six Newhaven boats and twenty boys
and hobbledehoys, hired by the Johnstones at half a crown each for a
night's job."

"Secret service!"

"What is it for?"

"I think it is a smuggling lay," suggested Flucker, "but we shall know
all in good time."

"Smuggling!" Their countenances fell; they had hoped for something more
nearly approaching the illegal.

"Maybe she has fand the herrin'," said a ten-year-old.

"Haw! haw! haw!" went the others. "She find the herrin', when there's
five hundred fishermen after them baith sides the Firrth."

The youngster was discomfited.

In fact the expedition bore no signs of fishing.

The six boats sailed at sundown, led by Flucker. He brought to on the
south side of Inch Keith, and nothing happened for about an hour.

Then such boys as were awake saw two great eyes of light coming up from
Granton; rattle went the chain cable, and Lord Ipsden's cutter swung at
anchor in four fathom water.

A thousand questions to Flucker.

A single puff of tobacco-smoke was his answer.

And now crept up a single eye of light from Leith; she came among the
boats; the boys recognized a crazy old cutter from Leith harbor, with
Christie Johnstone on board.

"What is that brown heap on her deck?"

"A mountain of nets--fifty stout herring-nets."

_Tunc manifesta fides._

A yell burst from all the boys.

"He's gaun to tak us to Dunbar."

"Half a crown! ye're no blate."

Christie ordered the boats alongside her cutter, and five nets were
dropped into each boat, six into Flucker's.

The depth of the water was given them, and they were instructed to shoot
their nets so as to keep a fathom and a half above the rocky bottom.

A herring net is simply a wall of meshes twelve feet deep, fifty feet
long; it sinks to a vertical position by the weight of net twine, and is
kept from sinking to the bottom of the sea by bladders or corks. These
nets are tied to one another, and paid out at the stern of the boat.
Boat and nets drift with the tide; if, therefore, the nets touched the
r