usted--her baby too. And those
horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child
will be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect it
no more.

Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up the
cliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart
sick--and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when at
midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with
his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who
will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who,
through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in her
grasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God."
She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except a
rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling
rock. Her eye--by some secret sympathy with the inanimate
object--watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a small
platform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders--she knew not how or
when--but it was safe--and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid
down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm
root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers
suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by
brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone
leapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall.
There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to
follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; but
she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall
of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy
centuries old--long ago dead, and without a single green leaf--but with
thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as
with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck--and with hands and feet
clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down,
she saw the whole population of the parish--so great was the
multitude--on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms--a hymn
breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was the
strain--but nothing dirge-like--sounding not of death, but deliverance.
Often had she sung that tune--perhaps the very words--but them she heard
not--in her own hut, she and her mother--or in the kir