ea. When the tide was full David could have sailed
his boat under its small seaward window. It contained a few pieces
of handsome furniture, and some old Delft earthenware which had
been brought from Holland by seafaring kindred long ago; all else
savored of narrow means.

But the woman set before David a pot of tea and some oat-cake, and
she fried him a fresh herring, and he ate with the delayed hunger of
healthy youth, heartily and with pleasure. And as he did so she
talked to him of his father Liot, whom she had known in her girlhood;
and David told her of Liot's long, hard fight with death, and she
said with a kind of sad pride:

"Yes; that way Liot was sure to fare to his long home. He would set
his teeth and fight for his life. Was it always well between him and
you?"

"He was hard and silent, but I could always lean on him as much as
I liked."

"That is a good deal to say."

"So I think."

Then they drew the past from the eternity into which it had fallen,
that they two, brought so strangely together, might look at it
between them. They talked of Liot's hard life and hard death for
an hour, and then the woman said:

"Paul Borson was of the same kind--silent, but full of deeds; and
his daughter Nanna, she also has a great heart."

"Show me now where she lives, and I will go and see her. Also, tell
me your name."

"I am Barbara Traill. When you have seen Nanna come back here, and I
will give you a place to sleep and a little meat; and as soon as it
is well with you it will be easy to pay my charges."

"If there is no room for me in my cousin's house I will come back
to you."

So Barbara walked with him to the end of the street, and pointed out
a little group of huts on the distant moor.

"Go into the first one," she said; "it is Nanna Sinclair's. And be
sure and keep to the trodden path, for outside of it there are bogs
that no man knows the bottom of."

Then David went forward alone, and his heart fell, and a somber look
crept like a cloud over his face. This was not the home-coming he
had anticipated--this poor meal at a stranger's fireside. He had
been led to think that his cousin Paul had a large house and the
touch of money-getting. "He and his will be well off," Liot had
affirmed more than once. And one day, while he yet could stand in
the door of his hut, he had looked longingly northward and said,
"Oh, if I could win home again! Paul would make a fourteen days'
feast to welcome me."

T