The red poppies which grew on the low-thatched roof raised up their heads, battered by yesterday's storms, the great flat fish, hung up to dry in the sun by the doorway, flapped in the light breeze, and from the shore came the shrill eager voices of children, who gathered the driftwood cast up by the gale. But the fishing-boats! The brown-sailed fishing-boats that ought to have beaten back so safely into the harbour with the turn of the tide, alas! there was never a sign nor a sail of them to be seen, and there was many an aching heart in Bulvertor that day. "Maybe they've got safe off towards the Cornish coast," said Kitty Trefyre, who sat knitting in the inglenook. "Nay," said Nancy sadly, "they'd have been round the head by now. It's only the stoutest of boats that could have weathered such a gale as blew last night, and _The Dolphin_ was hardly seaworthy at best. No! They're gone! They're gone! We shall never see the brown sails again! The sea has taken my Peter as it has claimed all my dearest and best, and my poor boy is a fatherless babe." She dropped her head on her hands, and sobbed till the tears fell into the cradle over the sleeping child. "Don't take it so hard!" said Kitty. "We won't give them up yet! And whisht, girl, whisht! Whatever you do don't weep over the boy! Have you never heard that if tears fall on a sleeping child the pixies have power to steal it away?" Nancy dashed the tears from her eyes, and walked to the doorway to take one long wistful look over the bay. The old woman laid aside her knitting and followed her. "It's ill luck!" she muttered. "Ill luck to shed tears on sleeping babes, and I doubt me but evil will come of it. I'll gather some fern seed and drop it in the cradle. It's a well-known charm for keeping off pixies or witches, and 'tis better to be wise in time--wise in time!" She hobbled out across the garden to where the ferns grew under the hedge, while Nancy turned sadly again to the fireside. She stooped over the cradle to kiss her sleeping child, but started back with a piercing, bitter cry. _The cradle was empty!_ The sound of her grief soon brought old Kitty hurrying to the cottage. "My boy! My beautiful boy!" sobbed the despairing mother. "The pixies have stolen him away. Oh, that I had wept myself blind ere I let the tears fall over his cradle!" She sat rocking herself to and fro in her sorrow, while the old woman threw the fern seed, picked, alas! too late, into the driftwood fire.