She was far from being dull in her feelings. Indeed, for one in her station and surroundings, she was unusually sensitive to mood of shore and sky, to the beauty of the sunsets or of the wild flowers which sprang amid the low shrubs. She was simply content. She was so perfectly in harmony with her world that she could not be unhappy. She grew as a bluebell grows. She was not deficient in womanly sentiment. She thought sometimes of the handsome sailor lad whose bold brown eyes had looked into hers, and she smiled anew with simple pleasure that he had found her fair. She remembered the audacious gleam which crossed his face when he bent forward to kiss her, and she did not forget his words about a sweetheart. She never spoke of her memories,--she came of a reticent race, and neither Gran'sir' Welch nor Bethiah was especially adapted to the reception of confidences,--but she speculated concerning the sweetheart she never had, and of whose coming fate gave no sign. There was never any tinge of melancholy in these reflections. She accepted life too simply to be sad, even with that vague oppression which seemed to casual observers the obvious consequence of the overpowering presence of the wastes. As years went on, she accepted the fact that the time of dreams of love was past, and with placid content she reflected that the shadow of the ungiven kiss of the sailor would never be disturbed by the pressure of lover's lips upon hers. It is between twenty and thirty that the temperament of a woman becomes fixed, and all her future irrevocably made or marred. Before this her character is too flexible, after this too rigid for impressions to be lasting. During these years the peace of the wide, calm, and sombre moorlands stamped indelibly upon Ruth a sweet, grave content which nothing could destroy or shake. There came a time when into the calm of the old house death rushed, with that dreadful precipitancy which always marks his coming, even when expected, and old Gran'sir' Welch, long past fourscore, was, in the quaint language of the King James version, gathered to his fathers. In the gray dawn Ruth tapped softly at the hives of the bees which stood, straw-thatched, against the eastern end of the cottage, and announced the sad news, firmly believing that unless within twelve hours the swarms were told of death they would desert their homes. Then in the sunny autumn afternoon a funeral procession of boats trailed from the red cottage to the graveyard behind the church in the village, where slept such of his forefathers as the sea had spared to die in their beds. With evenly dipping oars went first the quaintly-shaped pinky bearing the coffin between two stout fisherman, one at prow and one at stern; while after followed the dories in which were the few nearer relatives who had come to attend the services at the house.