u'll never lie beside him."

The tune to which she sang her lines was rather merry than otherwise,
and sometimes she would dance to the measure. The boys were kind to her,
and she liked to enter a school-yard during play time, because the young
people used to share their sweets with her.

Whenever the weather was very stormy she walked about the sands and tore
at her hair. If a ship stood into the bay to escape the northerly wind,
she was violently excited; and, when vessels anchored a good mile out,
she would scream warnings to the captains.

She had been a very fine girl in her time, and many of the fisher lads
would have been glad to have married her. The sailor-men too from the
colliers' port used to come after her. But she went mad when she found
the lad whom she liked best lying dead on the beach, and so she never
married.

The story of her sweetheart's death was one of the ugliest that ever was
known on the shores of the bay. He was a smart fellow, who went mate of
a brig that ran to Middlesborough for iron-stone. The brig was not much
of a beauty, and, when she had to go round, the odds were always about
two to one that she would "miss stays."

In coming northward from Middlesborough, one bad winter's day, she
missed stays once too often, and when the captain found that she would
not come round, he let go one anchor. But the chain was of no more use
than a straw rope: it snapped, and the vessel came ashore, broadside on
to the rocks. It was about dusk when she struck, and nothing could be
done to help the men.

Mad Mary's sweetheart swam ashore, but it seemed that he must have been
very much exhausted when he got to the sand, and somebody was waiting
for him who had better never have seen him.

A man who stood under the cliffs while the poor struggling swimmer
fought southward, had a bad reputation in every village from Spittal to
Cullercoates. He was a sulky fellow, and did not make his living by
legitimate ways. None of the men cared to associate with him, for he had
once violated every instinct of kindness that the fishermen and sailors
held dear.

He had found an abandoned vessel to the north of the Dogger Bank, and he
boarded her. Finding no one on deck, he determined to sail the vessel
into port and get the salvage on her. A retriever dog came floundering
along the deck and fawned upon him. Now the man had heard that if any
living thing is on board a vessel no salvage-money can be claimed when
th