know what a dangerous sign it is to give her confidence thus. "The night the sloop was lost," said Agnes, speaking very low, and only with difficulty refraining from a burst of tears. "late at night, when every creature was sleeping, I saw a man's figure cross along the shore. It was terrible bright moonlight, so that I could see as clear as day, and the haill town was still, and no a whisper in the air; but I saw the figure moving, and heard the step, straight on and now I mind itstraight towards Kirstin Beatoun's door." "The night the sloop was lost?" said Colin and then he added, with a gay burst of laughter," Keep your heart, Nancy; it was nae appearance woman, it was me!" "You!" Agnes Raeburn suddenly turned very pale, and recoiled from him with a start. "I had seen my bonnie lassie just that day -I mind it as weel as if it had been yestreen- and I came east the shore at twelve o'clock at night to see the house she was in; so you see it was your ain true sweetheart, Nancy, and naething to be feared for, after all." Trembling and shivering, cold and pale, Agnes began to cry quietly, with a hysterical weakness, and turned to go home. "You 're no to be vexed now-I've said naething to vex ye," said her suitor, hastening to press upon her a support from which she shrank. "I'll no fash ye the night ony mair, and, to let ye see how forbearing I am, I'll no fash ye the morn; but after that, Nancy, I'll take nae mair naysays. Ye'll have to learn a good honest Yes, and make me content ance for a'." CHAPTER XII. "It's nae use asking me where Nancy's been," said Mrs. Raeburn, with a little indignation. "She's come that length now that, whaever she takes counsel with, it's never with her mother; and though I canna shut my een from seeing that she 's come in a' shivering, and cauld, and white, like as she had ta'en a chill or seen a spirit, I canna take upon me to say what's the cause; for I'm no in my bairn's favor sae far as to be tellt what her trouble means." "Oh mother!" Poor Agnes shrunk into her corner by the fireside, and again fell into a little quiet weeping, but made no other reply. dwining you, a young lassie without a care, For she is very unreasonable, and knows it; and the knowledge only hurries those tears of vexation and weakness faster from her downcast eyes. She has nothing to complain of ― nothing to object to in her dilligent and devoted suitor - nothing to urge against the powerful arguments with which she feels convinced her mother is about to plead his cause. Poor Agnes does not know what she wants, nor what she would be at; is very well aware that Colin Hunter has distressed her sadly, and given her most unwitting offence to-night; and yet would not by any means stop her tears if she were told that Colin Hunter had satisfied himself with her. past refusals, and would trouble her no more. Over all the more immediate chaos, the shadowy form of Patie Rintoul floats like a cloud; and Agnes could break her heart to think that the visitation which has filled her with awe through all this twelvemonth was no visitation after all, and feels her face flush over with vexation and anger to think how she had been deceived. Patie Rintoul! Patie Rintoul ! -were all the sights and sounds of that night vanity, and did nothing, after all, come to her from him? And Agnes yearns and longs with a sick, fainting wonder, to think that she had been deceived, and that maybe he did not care for her after all. -- Still she is shivering, trembling, pale and cold, starting at sounds without, feeling her heart leap and throb with unreasoning expectation! What is Agnes looking for? - that Patie himself should rise, all chill and ghastly, from the dark caves of the sea, and say, to satisfy her longing heart, the words. he had no opportunity of saying in this Nannie, woman, canna ye keep up a world! But Agnes cannot tell what it is she heart!" exclaimed Euphie. "There's me, looks for! cannot give any reason for her that's come through far mair trouble than emotion feels her heart beating through all you ever kent, and had a house to keep, and its pulses with a hundred contradictions a man to fend for, no to speak of that wee wishes and hopes and terrors which will not sinner" and the important young mother be reconciled to each other; and at last, as at shook her hand at little Johnnie, triumphant first, can do nothing but cry cry like a on his grandmother 's knee. "But there's child, and refuse to be comforted! "Bless me, mother, what 's come owre this lassie?" said Euphie, with some anxiety. "I'm sure I canna tell what to make of it, unless she's just petted like a bairn. Nannie, woman, canna ye haud up your head, and let folk ken what ails you "There 's naething ails me," said Agnes, with a new flow of tears; "if folk would just let me alane." "What ails ye to take young Colin Hunter, then, when ye 're so set on your ain way?" interposed Mrs. Raeburn. "The lad's clean carried, and canna see the daylight for ye; and as lang as he 's that infature, he wouldna be like to cross your pleasure; and if you were in your ain house, ye might have twenty humors in a day, and naebody have ony right to speer a wherefore no to speak of a grand house like the Girnel, and weel-stockit byres, and a riding-horse, and maids to serve ye hand and fit. It's a miracle to me what the lassie would be at! And ye may just be sure of this, Nannie, that you'll never get such another offer, if ye lose this one." "I'm no heeding," said Agnes, speaking low, and with a shadow of sullenness. "My patience! hear her how she faces me!" exclaimed the incensed mother. "If I were Colin Hunter, I would take ye at your word, and never look again the road ye were on; and I'm sure it's my hope nae decent lad will ever be beguiled again to put himself in your power. I wash my hands o't. Ye may gang to Kirstin Beatoun or to your sister Euphie there, that belongs to the name of Rintoul as well; for I'll hae nae mair to do wi' an unthankful creature, that winna have guid counsel when it's offered, and casts away her guid chances out of clean contradiction. Just you bide a wee, my woman; ye 'll be thankful to take up wi' the crookedest stick in the wood before a 's done." "Before I took up with our John," said Euphie, interposing with some authority, "ye said that to me, mother, every lad that came to the house; but for a' that, I suppose naebody can deny that I've done very weel, and gotten as guid a man as is in a' the Elie, and no crook about him, either in the body or in the disposition. I'll no say, though, but that the Girnel would be a grand downsitting for Nancy, if she hadna that great objections to the lad. I think he 's a gey decent lad mysel, and no that ill to look upon. What gars ye have such an ill opinion of him, Nan nie?" "Bless me, what for will ye no take him then?" said Euphie with astonishment. "Because I'm no wanting him," said the capricious Agnes. Mother and daughter exchanged glances of marvelling impatience, and Mrs. Raeburn shook her head, and lifted up her hands; but Agnes dried her tears, and, rising from her corner, went about some piece of household business. She had no desire to suffer further catechizing. "But I wouldna aggravate her, mother, if I was you," said the astute Euphie, "with saying she'll get nacbody else, for that 'll do naething but set a' her pride up to try; and I wouldna tempt her into contradiction with praising him far better to misca' him, mother, till she wearies and takes his part; and she 's no sae sweard to do that as it is. I dinna ken if I ever would have set my mind even on our John, if ye hadna gi’en him such an ill word when he came first about the house." "Ye might have done far better, Euphie," said Mrs. Raeburn with a sigh. "When I consider what like a lassie ye was, and mind of him coming here first -nae mair like a wooer than auld Tammas Mearns is. But it's nae use speaking, and ye 're a wilful race, the haill generation of ye; and ane canna undo what's done, and you 're wonderful weel pleased with your bargain, Euphie." "I have occasion," said John Rintoul's wife, drawing herself up. But if you'll take my word, mother- for I mind by mysel ye 'll no take young Colin Hunter's part ony mair, but misca' him with a' your heart, every single thing he does; and you'll just see if it doesna set Nannie, afore the week's out, that she 'll never look anither airt, but straight to the Girnel.” How Mrs. Raeburn profited by her daughter's sage advice Euphie could not linger to see, for just then John himself entered to convoy his wife home. He had been with his mother, and John's face was very grave and sad. Catching a glimpse of it as she bade them good night, the veil fell again over the impressible, visionary mind of Agnes Raeburn. Deep, settled, unbroken melancholy always moved her strangely, as indeed every other real and sincere mood did. Immediately there sprang up, among all her bewildering thoughts, a hundred guesses and surmises as to what might be then passing in the mind of John Rintoul; and from John Rintoul her fancy wandered again to Patie, vividly recalling every scene and incident of the fatal night. If Mrs. Raeburn had been minded to put in instant operation the questionable plan of Euphie, she would have succeeded ill to-night; but as the mother and daughter sat alone together, it soon became quite suffi cient employment for one of them to comment | gave her the appearance of its daily pracbitterly on the absence a thing invariable tice. and certain of Samuel Raeburn at his favorite "public;" while the other sat motionless at her seam, living over again the dreary night which seemed to have become a lasting influence, shadowing her very life. CHAPTER XIII. "He wasna to fash me last night, and he wasna to fash me the day." Agnes Raeburn awoke with these words in her mind; and a sense of relief, like a respite from condemnation, in her heart. All the day through, Agnes was silent, responding only in faint monosyllables to her mother's attempts at conversation. In the forenoon Mrs. Raeburn was fortunately occupied, and not much inclined to talk; the afternoon she spent with Euphie; and thus through all those long, still, sunshiny hours, Agnes sat alone with the clock and the cat and the kitten, demurely sewing, and with a face full of brooding thoughtfulness. But in spite of this opportunity for deliberation, Agnes Raeburn was by no tempted to forestall her own fixed period for the final decision- it was so much easier to let her mind glide away as usual into those long wanderings of reverie than to fix it to the question, momentous as that was. Poor Agnes! it was to be a very reasonable decision, wise and sensible; and reason, after all, was so much out of her way. means Samuel Raeburn has taken his tea, and again gone out to his usual evening's sederunt in the little sanded parlor of Mrs. Browest's And gradually, as the day went on, a degree of strange excitement rose and increased in the sensitive heart of Agnes: unconsciously, as she went about all her daily homely duties, she found herself looking forward to the evening as to an era — an hour of mark and note in her life. She had dedicated it to thought to careful consultation with herself what she should do; and only one so full of wandering fancies, yet so entirely unaccustomed to deliberate thinking, could realize what a solemn state and importance endued the hour" public;" and now Agnes may make up the sacred to this grave premeditated exercise of her reflective powers. Very true, she could have accomplished this piece of thought quite well in her own little chamber, or even in the common family apartment, as she sat over her sewing through all the long afternoon; yet Agnes put off the operation, and appropriated to it, with extreme solemnity, a becoming place and time. The place, from some vague superstition which she did not care to explain to herself, was the little cove upon the shore where John Rintoul found the fragment of the wreck. The time, the last hour of daylight, when she could leave her work unobserved for Agnes did not care to visit the fated spot at night. Now Agnes Raeburn all her life had borne the character of thoughtfulness. Childhood and girlhood had added to her honors; — " a thoughtful lassie" was her common repute among her neighbors; and no one, except Agnes herself, had ever learned to suspect that serious thought, after all, and everything like deliberation or reflection, were things unknown, and almost impossible to her mind. Powers of sympathy in such constant use and exercise, that the careless momentary mood of another was enough to suggest, to Agnes' impulsive spirit, states of feeling utterly unknown to their chance originators an imagination ever ready to fill with vivid scenery and actors the vacant air, whereon her mind, passive itself and still, was content to look for hours - with a strong power of fancy, and a nature sensitive to every touch, were qualities which wrapped her in long and frequent musings, but disabled her almost as much for any real exercise of mind as they fire and finally sweep the hearth, and put away the cups and saucers, that her mother may find no reprovable neglect if she comes earliest home. But Agnes cannot tell what the feeling is which prompts her to take out of the drawer the new camel's-hair shawl which has kept her in comfort all these winter Sabbaths, and to put on the beaver hat, saucily looped up at one side, and magnificent with its gray feather, which no one has ever seen her wear on "an every-day" before. What Mrs. Raeburn would say to this display is rather a serious question, and Agnes assumes the unusual bravery with a flutter at her heart. It still wants half an hour of sunset; and Inchkeith throws a cold lengthened shadow, enviously shutting out the water, which throbs impatiently under these dark lines of his, from the last looks of the sun. Black, too, in its contrast with the light, the nearer side of Inchkeith himself frowns with misanthropic gloom upon the brightened sands and glorified brow of Largo Law. A little white yacht, bound for some of the smaller ports high up the Firth, where the quiet current only calls itself a river —just now shooting out of the shadow, reels, as you can fancy, dazzled and giddy, under the sudden canonization which throws a halo over all its shapely sails and spars; and passing fisher-boats hail each other with lengthened cries-only rustic badinage and homely wit, if you heard them close at hand - but stealing with a strange half-pathetic cadence over the distant water. Ashore here, through the quiet rural high-road, the kye, with long shadows stalking after them, go soberly home from the rich clover-fields that skirt the public road. And quite another cadence, though even to it the distance lends a strange charm of melancholy, have the voices of the little herds and serving-maidens who call the cattle home. The tide is back, and all the beach glistens with little pools, each reflecting bravely its independent sunset. This larger basin, which you might call the fairies' bath, has nearly lost the long withdrawing line of light which only touches its eastern edge as with a rim of gold-and the sun is gliding off the prominent fold of the brae, though it droops as if the weight of wealth were almost too much for the sweet atmosphere which bears it, glowing in ruddy yellow glory, over the sea-side turf. The gowans, like the birds, have laid their heads under their wing, and the evening dews begin to glisten on the grass- the soft, short, velvet grass on which Agnes thinks she can almost trace the outline still of the rude fragment, chronicle of death and fatal violence, which crushed the gowans down, and oppressed the peaceful stillness, on yon bright March morning, past a twelvemonth and a day. A bit of yellow rock projecting from the rich herbage of the brae, and overtopped by a little mound, like a cap, all waving and tufted over with brambles and upright plumes of hawthorn, serves her for a seat-and Agnes composes herself solemnly, puts one small foot upon a little velvet hassock of turf, embossed upon the pebbly saud, and, stooping her face to the support of both her hands, looks far away into the distance, and begins her momentous deliberation. What is it so soon that catches the dreamy eye, only too fully awake to every passing sight, though it puts on such a haze of thoughtfulness? Nothing but a long tuft of wiry grass waving out of a little hollow on the top of the nearest rock, with a forlorn complaining motion, as if it would fain look on something else than these waving lines of water, and fain escape the dangerous vicinity which sometimes crushes with salt and heavy spray, instead of genial dewdrops, its glittering sharp blades. Agnes muses, in her unconscious reverie, and her thinking has not yet begun. Waking up with a sudden start, she changes her attitude a little, lets one hand fall by her side, and rests her cheek on the other, before she makes another beginning. What now? A glittering bit of crystal in the rock which the sun gets note of just as he is gliding from the point, and, having little time to spare, uses what he has with such effect, that the eyes of the looker-on are half-blinded with the sparkling commotion. Ah dreamy, wandering, gentle eyes! how easy it is to charm them out of the abstraction which they feign would assume! Now it is the flash and soft undulation of the rising line of water-now a glistening group of sea-birds going home at nightfall to their waiting households on the May-now a rustle of wind, or of a passing insect, soft among the grass - whatever it is, constantly it is something; and Agnes sees the sky darken, and all the light fade away in the west, but her thinking has still failed to come to a beginning, while the end looks hours or years away. Just then a footstep, almost close upon her, startles her. She has been so absorbed by all these passing fancies, that not the deepest abstraction of philosophic thought could have made her more entirely unaware of this step in the distance, though for some time it has been advancing steadily on. Turning suddenly round, she sees between her and the pale clear light of the eastern sky a dark figure in a sailor's dress. Her heart beat a little quicker with the surprise, and her whole appearance, shyly drawing back on her seat, with one hand fallen by her side, and the other leaning just as it had supported her hastily-lifted cheek on her knee, is of one suddenly started out of a dream. It is some minutes before she raises her eyes to the face which now looks down wistfully upon her; but when she does so, the effect is instantaneous. A sudden shiver running through every vein - a backward crouch into the very rock, as if there would be protection even in the touch of something earthly and palpable-a deadly paleness, leaving her face- lips, and cheeks, and all—ashen gray like extreme age- a long, shuddering gasp of breath, and eyes dilated, intense-shining out upon the stranger in a very agony. The stranger stands before her, as suddenly arrested as she had been, and, crying" Nancy, Nancy!" with a voice which rings into her heart like a dread admonition, waits, all trembling with suppressed joy and eagerness, to receive some word of greeting. - "I've done you no wrong-I've done you no wrong!" gasps out at last, a broken, interrupted voice. "If there's vision given ye yonder to see what's done on earth, ye might see folks' hearts as well; and though you never said a word to me in this life, I've thought of none forby yoursel― never, never, though I did let Colin Hunter come after me; and whatever you are now, oh, man! have mind of folks' mortal weakness, and dinna look at me with such dreadful een, Patie Rintoul!" this. Nancy!"-still he could say nothing but "I thought it was you the night the sloop was lost-I thought you couldna leave this life, and no let me ken; and I could bear to think it was you then, for all my heart fainted, baith with sorrow and fear; but I've done naething to call you up with thae upbraiding een, and I daurna look at ye now-I daurna | takes an instant now to subdue her trembling look at ye now, and you been twelve months and mair at the bottom of the sea!" He made no answer, and Agnes dared not rise with her fainting, faltering limbs, to flee from the imagined spectre. The cold dew had gathered in great beads upon her brow her hands rose, all trembling and unsteady, to cover her eyes, and shut out the face whose fixed look afflicted her almost to madness; but the weak, hesitating arms fell again she could not withdraw her intense and terrified gaze could not turn away her fascin ated eyes from his. The steady figure before her moved a little - the strong, broad breast began to heave and swell-and sobs, human sobs, reluctant and irrestrainable, broke upon the quiet echoes. Then he leant over her, closer to her, shadowing the little nook she crouched into; and warm, human breath, upon her brow, revived like a cordial her almost fainted heart. I'm nae spirit-I've gotten hame, Nancy I'm Patie Rintoul !" Patie Rintoul ! A succession of strong shudderings, almost convulsive, come upon the relaxing form of Agnes; she is looking at him now with straining eyes, with lips parted by quick, eager breath, with a face which, gradually flushing over, is now of the deepest crimson. Patie Rintoul ! and superstition and terror and doubt disappear into a sudden passion of shame and humiliation; for Agnes has told unasked a secret which the living Patie might have begged for on his knees in vain; and now it is impossible even to hope that spirit or appearance" could assume this bronzed, manly sailor face this dress so indisputably real-these strong travelling shoes, clouted by hands of human cobbler, and soiled by dust of veritable roadways; and, burying her face in her hands, which still cannot conceal the burning flush under them, Agnes owns her error by faltering forth, in utter dismay and helplessness, "Patie, Í wasna meaning you!" tears I But the generous Patie will not take advantage of his triumph. For a single moment the little cove is startled by a sound of wavering laughter-laughter that speaks a momentary ebullition of joy, greatly akin to and then, with a certain quiet authority, the stranger draws the hands from the hidden face, and half lifts the trembling Agnes from her seat. "I'll ask you anither day what you mean," said the magnanimous Patie; 66 now I'm content just to be beside ye again; but I'm just on my road to the town -I've seen nane of our ain folk yetand, Nancy, ye must take me hame to my mother." And in a moment there flows upon her sympathetic heart the blessedness of Kirstin Beatoun receiving back her son. It scarcely -the thought has strengthened her: "Eh, Patie, your mother!- her heart will break for joy." "But I come again my lane," said Patie sadly. "What wasna true for me, was true for my father, Nancy. I was washed off the deck of the sloop, and some way fought through the water till I got to a rock; but the auld man went down in her before my very een, and that 'll be little comfort to my mother." "It'll be comfort enough to see you, Patie," said Agnes quietly; "let me slip in before and warn her. I've heard of joy killing folk-and come you in quiet, and speak to naebody, by the back of the town." It was the best arrangement, and Patie reluctantly suffered his companion to leave him as they reached the outskirts of the little town. It was so dark now that the stranger was safe, and had little chance of being recognized. CHAPTER XIV. Forgetting entirely the exhaustion of her own late agitation; forgetting the usual extreme decorum and gravity of her demeanor; forgetting herself altogether, indeed, and even forgetting her own somewhat embarrassing share in the joy which she goes to intimate, Agnes Raeburn passes, running, along Elie shore. The gossips have almost all withdrawn from the open door to the warm fireside, as more suitable to this chill March evening, but still there are loungers enough to get up a rather lively report of the sudden illness of little Johnnie Rintoul, confidently vouched for by two or three who have seen Nancy Raeburn flying at full speed "west the toun" to bring the doctor. Nancy Raeburn, quite unconscious, careless and unobservant of who sees her, runs without a pause to Kirstin Beatoun's door. It is time for Kirstin Beatoun to go to her early rest poor heart! there are no household duties to keep her now from the kind, oblivious sleep which helps her for an hour or two to forget her grief. Pausing reverently at the window, Agnes can see dimly through the curtain and the thick panes a solitary figure sitting by the little fire, the faint lamp burning high above her, an open book in her lap, and by her side, upon the little table, a cup of weak, oft-watered tea, Kirstin's sole cordial. In the old times the fire used to be the household light here, casting all official lamps into obscurity; but now the little red glow of its much-diminished contents add no cheerfulness to the melancholy dim apartment, while the projecting ledge of the mantelpiece, by which the lamp hangs, throws a deep shadow upon the hearth. The door is shut, but Agnes, breathless and excited in |