She was sitting now by the dying fire in the little kitchen listening to
the storm without; the hands of the grandfather clock were nearing the
midnight hour, and Jacob Tresidder lay in a sound sleep upstairs hearing
nought. She was of the type of fisher-maid common to the depths of
Cornwall. The soft rich colouring of her skin reminded one more of the
sunny south, and her big brown eyes had always a glow in them.

To-night they were more luminous than ever as she sat by the fire
watching the sparks flicker and die, as if the dawn of some hidden
knowledge were being borne to them on the breath of the storm. The roar
of the sea as it dashed up the face of the cliff seemed to soothe her,
and she would smile and turn her ear to catch the sound of its breaking
on the beach below.

And yet, seven years before, "Daft Bess" had been the brightest and
prettiest girl in Trewithen, and the admiration of every lad in the
country round! And Big Ben Martyn, who had a boat of his own, had been
the pride of every girl! But he only cared for Bess and she for him. All
their lives they had been together and loved,--and a simple, truthful
love can only produce its own affinity, though in its travail it pass
through pain and suffering, and, maybe, the laying down of life!

Ben Martyn was twenty-five, and his own master, when he asked Bess, who
had just turned twenty, to be his wife.

"The cottage be waitin', Bess, my gurrl!" he whispered as they sat on
the cliff in the summer night; she knitting as usual, and he watching
the needles dart in and out. They were very silent in their love, these
two, who had been lovers ever since they could paddle.

"'Tis so lawnly betimes!" he pleaded.

And Bess set his longing heart at rest.

"So soon as vather can spare I, Ben," she said; and she laid her
knitting on the rock beside them, and drew his sea-tanned face close
down beside her own. "Ee dawn't seek fer I more'n I seek fer ee, deary!"
and kissed him.

Thus they plighted their troth.

[Sidenote: One Dark Night]

Then came the winter and the hard work. And one dark stormy night, when
the waves rose and fought till they nearly swept Trewithen out of sight,
Ben Martyn was drowned.

He had been trying to run his boat into the shelter of the cove and
failed, and in the morning his battered body lay high and dry on the
quiet beach among the wreckage.

For weeks Bess lay in a high fever; and then, when the strain was
greater than her t