UNIV. OF

Ο

CHAPTER I.

ON THE BEACH.

"And nearer voices, wild or tame,

Of airy flock and childish throng,
Up from the water's edge there came
Faint snatches of familiar song."

N the rocky Banffshire coast of the Moray Firth,

midway between the busy fishing towns of Portsoy and Cullen, is a long stretch of beautiful silvery sand, terminating in a cove or creek, around which nestle some forty homesteads, forming a hamlet known as "Sandend."

These cottages were evidently not built with any desire to command the prospect of the changeful ocean, for not infrequently the gable-end in which there was not the slightest pretext of a window, was directed to the bay. No! these busy fisher-folk preferred to "gang furth" to see the view; and on an autumn evening, some thirty years ago, when the day's work of repairing and drying the nets was over,

M.R.

I

I

seated on a bench at a point of vantage, would be found the elderly inhabitants of the place.

"The tough old boatmen, half amphibious grown,"

with horny hands, and faces tanned and seamed from exposure in all weathers, smoked their pipes and gazed right sea-wards, interrupted only by an occasional glance overhead, while the women, whose knitting needles seemed to go by magic, more wistfully even than their companions scanned the briny deep.

No homeward bound mail steamer or troop-ship was in sight, but a fleet of open herring boats, drifting with the tide, manned, several of them, by their kith and kin-able-bodied men of the hamlet. Some of these grand-sires had sunk far into the infirmities of age, but as the sun set, their dim eyes saw in imagination the drift net "shot" into the sea, and murmuring the prayer,

"O God of might, O God of right!

Go with Thy children where they go;
Be Thou their guide, their beacon light,
And keep them safe from every foe,"

they retired indoors to rest, and to dream of toiling at the long labyrinth of ropes, meshes, bladders and cork-floats, in the darkness of the night, and of the "glow of living light" in the boats caused by the phosphoric properties of the newly-hauled herring.

On an August evening, in the year 1859, a little group of people had spent a quiet hour on a bench at the end of the "big hoose," when a pleasant-looking old woman, dressed in a dark serge gown (about which was a strong "savour of the sea") and a white kerchief neatly arranged across her bosom, suddenly exclaimed, “Sandy! isna it gettin' late, an' time thae bairns had gaen their ways hame?"

The individual addressed, gave a look at the sky, continued chewing his tobacco, but vouchsafed no remark. The woman eyed him nervously, for well she knew that

"In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign."

After some minutes he quietly replied, "Dinna fash yersel', gudewife; they're a' richt; saut water winna hurt them; " but evidently discerning that this remark failed to re-assure her, he continued, "Lat the little anes alane. What for wud ye spile their play? Bless their little herts! they'll niver be sae happy again, niver in this warld."

"That's nae to the pint, Sandy," the woman rejoined. "Their folk will be fay aboot them, sae they maun gae hame this vera meenit;" and suiting the action to the word, she jerked her knitting wires into