ways seeming to be studded
with great gouts of crimson blood, where the sea anemones clung in
hundreds, or else by drowning in the deep, clear water, when the tide
was up, and the waves played amidst the long, chocolate strands of fucus
and bladder-wrack, waving to and fro.

It was going to be a wild night, but it seemed in keeping with the chaos
of his mind. Far out on the sea, softly rising to and fro in the thick
darkness, were the lights of the fishing-boats, as a score or so lay
drifting with their herring-nets; and in his heart there was not a rough
fisher there whose lot he did not envy.

"And she could not come!" he groaned, as he stood there, with bare head.
"Oh, my love--my love! To go without one gentle word, far, far away,
and but yesterday so happy!"

The wind increased in force, and, with the gathering strength of the
tide, the waves came rushing in, to beat in thunder against the rocks
far beneath his feet; and then, with a rush, the fine salt spray was
whirled up, and swept in his face, as he gazed straight out to sea.

At another time he might have shuddered, standing thus upon the edge of
that great cliff, with--just dimly seen in its more intense blackness--
the rugged headland that stretched like a buttress into the sea upon his
left. But now the horrors of the place seemed welcome, and he felt, as
a smile came on his dripping features, that it would be pleasant to leap
from where he stood right off at once into oblivion.

It seemed so easy, such a quiet way of getting rest from the turmoil and
trouble of the future, that the feeling seemed to grow upon him.

"No," he said at last; "that would be a coward's end. I've done one
brave thing to-day; and now, old friend, you shall have me again to toss
upon your waves, but it shall be as your master, not as a slave."

As he spoke he raised his hands and stretched them out, when he heard a
hoarse cry behind him, and as he sharply turned and stepped back,
something seemed to come out of the darkness, seize him by the throat,
and the next moment he was over the cliff, suspended above eternity.

Then there was an awful silence, only broken by the roar, thud, and hiss
of the waves below, as they rushed in, broke upon the rocks, and then
fled back in foamy spray.

Richard's fingers were dug into the short, velvet turf, and he hung
there, with his legs rigid, afraid to move, and wondering whether those
were friendly or inimical hands that clutched h