As unlike as possible to a heroine of romance, the child reared in this homely fashion is yet sweet enough to carry blessing and love wherever she goes; to heal old wounds with her simple beauty and goodness; to carry peace into the unforgiving relentlessness of her mother's heart; and to efface the blackness of her father's crime (justifiable homicide, a soft-hearted jury would resolve it into) with tender penitential tears. Miss Inga is in truth a very lovable character, innocent, simple, and yet intelligent; gentle and winning in her ways, although she can be spirited and resolute upon occasion; full of affectionate respect for her stern mother, and of deep romantic devotion for her father, for whose sake she marries without love, which no properly constituted heroine of romance ever does or can do, but which many a good woman has done, to find, as she did, peace and household joy and contentment at a good man's hearth. Many of the descriptive passages in _Rockbound_ are written with considerable vividness and effect, as for instance the storm, through whose agency a crisis in the plot of the tale is worked out. 'A tempestuous morning was breaking, and sea and wind were uttering wrathful warnings of what might befall the unwary fishers who were out on the deep, and I looked out with eyes which scarcely saw--with a mind on which impressions seemed lost. As if still in a dream, I beheld the furious waves come rolling majestically from the far deep and break with thundering sound upon the rocky arms of our voe. As I gazed, there suddenly appeared round a point of the high land a little vessel with closely reefed sails struggling in the sea between Vaalafiel and its neighbouring island. Her hull was partially concealed from my view by the arms of our voe, but very soon I seemed to know that it must be the _Seamew_, and that she was attempting to enter the harbour; and a thought occurred to me which was suggestive of peril at once: Why do they try to pass through so narrow and dangerous a strait when the storm is at its worst? As if in answer to my thought, the vessel hoisted a flag of distress, probably with a forlorn hope that some wakeful eye might see it, and then she lay to, as trying to advance in the very teeth of the gale. My father, everything, was forgotten in that breathless moment, as I watched my tiny ship thus turn, pause, and enter the rocky path beset by death. She was evidently being driven by cruel necessity to dare so hazardous a piece of navigation, and I soon discerned that she was no longer manageable. Just then a gust of wind still more furious than before caught her at a critical moment, and in less time than I say the words in, she was tossing among some detached rocks at the entrance to the harbour, a total wreck, and likely to go down every instant.