“And when you did notice, you took me for a ghost, I think,” I said, laughing, but feeling still a little aggrieved. No trace of the strange expression which I had noticed on her face when I had first summoned her lingered there as she admitted me, but at these careless words of mine I saw it come again. “Coom nigh the fire,” she said, after a pause, during which she had gazed at me as one half awake. “Did you take me for a ghost?” I persisted, as I drew near the hearth. “I took yo’ fur—summat,” she answered doggedly. Then, after a moment’s silence, she began to press me hospitably to dry my “shoon,” and informed me that she would “mak’ tay in a two-three minutes.” “Yo’re out late,” she added presently, gazing at me as I basked in the comfortable warmth. “Dun yo’ coom fro’ far?” “I have walked along the shore from Saltleigh,” I said. “I am staying at the inn there. It is not very far. When the storm is over I shall make my way back by road.” “Ah,” she commented, bending down to fill the little brown teapot from the now bubbling kettle. As she did so I caught sight of the glitter of a wedding-ring upon the gnarled brown hand. “Do you live here all alone?” “Ah,” affirmatively. “You’ve been married, I see.” She nodded. “Your husband is dead, I suppose?” Again the curious look, but no answer. I repeated my question. “I reckon he is dead, ma’am,” she replied in a low voice. “Yigh, I met say I know he’s dead. It’s thirty-five year sin’ he went—he mun be dead.” “Did he not die here, then?” “Nay, ma’am, he wur a sailor. He deed at say on jest sich a night as this. He deed, and he thought on me.” The smile which I had seen once before, which held so much of love, and yet had in it a suggestion of fear, hovered about her lips again for a moment, and was gone. “Tay’s drawed nice now,” she said in a different tone. “Will yo’ please to pull up, ma’am?” motioning me to draw my chair nearer the table. “I’ve soom leet cake here as I’ll toast in a minute, but I have na’ a bit o’ butter, I’m sorry to tell yo’; yo’ mun mak’ shift wi’out.” As I murmured my thanks for the generosity with which she had set before me the best her house contained, and emphatically assured her that I infinitely preferred light cake without butter, my hostess reseated herself in her elbow-chair, and gazed at me, while I ate and drank, with evident satisfaction. But she did not speak, and each furtive glance that I sent in her direction increased my curiosity. It was such a handsome face, with its great dark eyes, its still beautiful colouring, its expression of reserved strength, of patience, of—what was it? Expectation or longing? A little of both, perhaps, but all placid and contained. “You must be very lonely,” I said, pushing away my cup at length, and leaning back in my chair. She looked up quickly, sighed, and suffered her hands to drop together in her lap. “I am that,” she said, half to herself.