unt the spots on the broad, brown
leaf of the plane, than perplex herself with so uncongenial a
difficulty. But the difficulty pursued her nevertheless, and baffled and
bewitched her as it has done wiser people.

The master and mistress of Otter were spectators of the harvest home,
the plentiful feast, the merry dance in the spacious barn where their
share of the fruits of the earth was about to be garnered. Leslie stood
in her complimentary, gay gala ribbons, with her fingers meeting upon
her wedding-ring, looking composedly and with interest on the buxom
women and stalwart men, the loving lads and lasses, the cordial husbands
and wives. Hector Garret, however, scarcely tarried to reply to his
health and prosperity drunk in a flowing bumper, but broke from the
scene as if its good was his evil, its blessing his curse.

In the parish church where Leslie had exhibited her bridal finery she
now listened to the clergyman, and bent her head in penitence and
worship, and was disturbed by Hector Garret's gesture of restlessness
and attitude of care.

When the new moon was rising in the sky, Leslie would bid the little one
look up and clap her hands, while Hector paced up and down unquiet and
dissatisfied. Then she would carry the child off to her cradle pillow,
and coming back would stand and look at the moon, while he was close to
her, murmuring "Leslie! Leslie!" But she would turn upon him pale and
cold as the moon above her, and would address him, "See, yonder is a
ship doubling Earlscraig point and steering into the Otter sea."

VI.--THE STORM.

The October winds, tossing the late oats and the frosted heather, were
lashing the Otter sea into heaving waves and flakes of foam. That
western sea has its annals and its trophies, as well as den and moor.
Edward Bruce crossed it to give to Ireland as dauntless a king as he
whom a woman crowned, and who found a nameless grave; and there, in the
glassy calm of a summer night, the vessel, with its passengers lulled in
fatal security and slumber, sank like lead, fathoms beyond the aid of
modern science with its myriads of inventions and its hardy
self-confidence.

The few fishers of Otter were exposed to the swell rolling from New
England and Labrador to Galloway and Argyle; many a lamp stood day and
night in cottage windows, many an anxious woman forsook her brood, and
under her sheltering plaid ran here and there, dizzy and desperate, to
beg for counsel, and for tidings o