Few knew better than did Lady Bride Marchmont the temper of the rude fisher-folk of St. Bride’s Bay. From her childhood she had been wont to accompany her mother down to that cluster of cottages and hovels which formed the little community, and she had grown up with an intuitive understanding of the people, and their ways and methods of thought, which had been matured and deepened by her many talks with Abner. She knew full well that, although in the main kindly men individually, there was a vein of ferocity running through the fibre of their nature, which a certain class of events always awoke to active life. Thirty years back these men, or their fathers, were professionally wreckers, and it had needed long patience, and all the gentle influence of the Duchess and her helpers, to break them of this terrible sin. Of late years deliberate wrecking had to a very great extent died out, but there was still in the hearts of the fishermen an irradicable conviction that when “Providence” did send a vessel to pieces on their iron-bound coast, the cargo of that vessel became their lawful prey; and they were careless enough, in striving to outwit the authorities and secure the booty, of any loss of human life which might have been averted by prompt measures on their part. They made it rather a principle than otherwise to let the crew drown before their eyes without any attempt at rescue. When the crew were saved, they had a way of claiming the contents of the ship if any came ashore, and that was a notion altogether foreign to the ideas of the fishermen of St. Bride. The same instinct of plunder awoke within them when any misfortune occurred in the neighbourhood; and wherever there was booty to be had for the taking, there were the hardy fisher-folk of the place likely to be found. Bride realised in a moment that if they saw the glow of this fire, and understood its meaning as she did, they would set off at once to join the band of marauders and incendiaries; and as every addition to such a band brings a fresh access of lawlessness and a growing sense of power, the very fact of the arrival of this reinforcement was likely enough to result in fresh outrage, and fresh scenes of destruction and horror.