the waves down below on the
rocks was soothing.

Presently something dropped lightly on the grass before my eyes. It
was a sprig of sweetbrier. I turned lazily and saw Thora standing
by my side. Without speaking a word she sat down, and together we
looked out upon the blue sea.

We remained silent for several moments without greeting each other.
But at last I said:

"I was thinking maybe you'd be coming across to see me, Thora, one
o' these bonnie days, now that we never meet at the school. It was
good o' ye to come."

She turned to me with a smile, but I saw that her eyes were
moistened with tears.

"What has gone wrong, Thora?" I continued. "Has Carver been ill
using you again?"

"Yes, he's aye using me ill," she said, sobbing and wiping her
eyes. "I was in the garden just now, nipping some dead leaves from
the briar bush, when he came in at the gate. He never likes to see
me among my flowers, and when he found me there he got into a
passion, and walked over the beds, and kicked the plants about with
his sea boots. Then he ordered me away into the house, and said
that if I wanted work to do, I might go and clean out the stable. I
told him that was a man's work, not a lassie's; and at that he took
up a stick, and struck me with it across the back."

And here she sobbed again.

I did not speak, but I felt my blood run hot in indignation against
Carver Kinlay. I would have liked to thrash him.

"If I were a lad like you, Halcro," she continued, "it's not long I
would bide at Crua Breck. I would run away to sea. But what can a
helpless lassie do? Nobody has a good word to say for my father
since the Curlew was lost, and--I canna help it--I hae just as
great an ill will at him as anybody else has."

"They say that it was all through Carver that my father was
drowned," I said.

"Tell me, Halcro, what was the quarrel between your father and
mine? What way did it come about?"

"Well, I canna tell ye the ins and outs o' it all, but my father
had some secret about Carver, and Carver was aye afraid o' him. You
see, Thora, folks say that when a man saves another from the sea,
there's sure to be a quarrel between them. And my father saved
Carver Kinlay--not, perhaps, from the sea, but he saved his life."

"How was that, Halcro?"

"It was when you were a bairn, Thora. A ship was wrecked here on
the Gaulton rocks, and all your family were aboard. Your mother and
Tom were picked up by the Curlew, but Carver and y