an the scene around her. The
ripple of the little waves which played upon the pebbles was music to
her ear. In a tranquil and hopeful spirit she thought of her errand,
and looked steadily over the whole expanse of the sea, where, under the
broad moonlight, and a sky which had at this season no darkness in it,
there was certainly no vessel in sight.

Pursuing her walk northwards, she perceived a small dark object lying on
the silvery sands. When she reached it, she found it was a little cask,
which the smell declared to contain rum. By the smell, and the cask
being light, it was clear that some of the spirit had been spilled.
Annie found a small hole, beside which lay a quill. She feared that
this told too plainly of the neighbourhood of smugglers, and her heart
sunk. She went on, and immediately saw another dark object lying on the
beach--a person, as she thought. It was a woman, in the common country
clothing, sound asleep. Annie hastened to wake her, thinking it unsafe
to sleep under the moon's rays. To her extreme surprise she found it
was Lady Carse.

She could imagine the lady to have come down in hope of meeting a
smuggling vessel. She would not have wondered to meet her wandering
among the coves; but that on such an errand, at such a time, she should
be asleep, was surprising.

Annie tried gentle means to rouse her, which would enable her to slip
away as the lady awoke, sparing her the pain of her presence. She
rattled the pebbles with her foot, coughed, and at last sang--but all
without causing the lady to stir. Then the widow was alarmed, and
stooped to look closer. The sleeper breathed heavily, her head was hot,
and her breath told the secret of her unseasonable drowsiness. Annie
shrank back in horror. At first she concluded that much of Lady Carse's
violent passion was now accounted for. But she presently considered it
more probable that this was a single instance of intemperance, caused by
the temptation of finding a leaking cask of spirit on the sands, just in
a moment of disappointment, and perhaps of great exhaustion. This
thought made Annie clear what to do.

She went back to the cask, made the hole larger with a stone, and poured
out all the rum upon the sand. The cask was now so light that she could
easily roll it down to the margin of the tide, where she left it, half
full of sea-water. Having thus made all safe behind her, she proceeded
to the coves, where she found, not any si