it while the fire was yet alive. There was but little oil in it.
She reached out her hand for the oil can. It was not there. Rollo had
considered that the lady would want light in the cave; Lady Carse had
considered that the widow might for one night make a good fire serve her
purposes; and so the oil can was gone to the same place with the peats.

Annie sank down on her seat, almost subdued. Not quite subdued,
however, even by this threat of the baffling of the great object of her
life. Not quite subdued, for her heart and her ear were yet open to the
voices of nature.

The scream of a sea-bird reached her, as the creature was swept by on
the blast.

"That is for me," she said to herself, the blood returning to her
stricken heart and pale cheek. "How God sends His creatures to teach us
at the moment when we need His voice! I have seen the cormorant sitting
in his hole in wintry weather,--sitting there for days together, hungry
and cold, trying now and then to get out, and driven back by such a
blast as he cannot meet,--by such a blast as this. And then he sits on
patiently, and moves no more till the wind lulls and the sky clears.
And if his wing is weak at first it soon strengthens. The blast drives
me back to-night; but I, who have thoughts to rest upon, may well bear
what a winged creature can. That screamer was sent to me. I wonder
what has become of it. I hope it is not swept quite away."

But it would not do to sit thinking while the fire was just out, and the
lamp likely to burn only an hour. She lighted the lamp with
difficulty,--with a beating heart and trembling hands, lest the last
available spark should go out first. But the wick caught; and the lamp
was placed in the window, sending, as it seemed to Annie, a gleam
through the night of her own mind, as well as through that of the stormy
air. It quickened her invention and her hopes.

"There is an hour yet," thought she. "I am sure it will burn an hour;
and something may be sent by that time."

She took off her cotton handkerchief, tore off the hem, and ravelled out
the cotton as quickly as she could, and twisted it into a wick which she
thought she could fix by a skewer across a tin cup from which Rollo
drank his whisky when at home. She brought down from the chimney and
looked over rapidly all the oily parts of the fish, and every fatty
portion of the dried meat hung up in the smoke for winter use; and these
she made a desperate end