ned and decorous; and girls were very restrained in their
manners. No one would have taken her to be anything more than an
ordinary country girl had not a chance enabled her to show herself full
of bravery and resource.

Every boat in the village went away North one evening, and not a man
remained in the Row excepting three very old fellows, who were long past
work of any kind. When a fisherman grows helpless with age he is kept by
his own people, and his days are passed in quietly smoking on the
kitchen settle or in looking dimly out over the sea from the bench at
the door. But a man must be sorely "failed" before he is reduced to
idleness, and able to do nothing that needs strength. A southerly gale,
with a southerly sea, came away in the night, and the boats could not
beat down from the northward. By daylight they were all safe in a
harbour about eighteen miles north of the village. The sea grew worse
and worse, till the usual clouds of foam flew against the houses or
skimmed away into the fields beyond. When the wind reached its height
the sounds it made in the hollows were like distant firing of
small-arms, and the waves in the hollow rocks seemed to shake the ground
over the cliffs. A little schooner came round the point, running before
the sea. She might have got clear away, because it was easy enough for
her, had she clawed a short way out, risking the beam sea, to have made
the harbour where the fishers were. But the skipper kept her close in,
and presently she struck on a long tongue of rocks that trended far out
eastward. The tops of her masts seemed nearly to meet, so it appeared as
if she had broken her back. The seas flew sheer over her, and the men
had to climb into the rigging. All the women were watching and waiting
to see her go to pieces. There was no chance of getting a boat out, so
the helpless villagers waited to see the men drown; and the women cried
in their shrill, piteous manner. Dorothy said, "Will she break up in an
hour? If I thowt she could hing there, I would be away for the
lifeboat." But the old men said, "You can never cross the burn." Four
miles south, behind the point, there was a village where a lifeboat was
kept; but just half-way a stream ran into the sea, and across this stream
there was only a plank bridge. Half a mile below the bridge the water
spread far over the broad sand and became very shallow and wide. Dorothy
spoke no more, except to say "I'll away." She ran across the moo