When they passed the cask, now beginning to float in the rising tide, Lady Carse started. It was clear that she now remembered what had made her sleep. "There is a cask!" said she, in her hurry. "Yes, a cask of sea-water," Annie quietly observed. "I emptied out the bad stuff that was in it, and--" "You did! What right had you?" "It was contraband," said Annie. "Macdonald saw the cargo thrown over: nobody would have claimed it, and plenty would have helped themselves to what is unfit to drink. So I poured it out upon the sand." "Very free and easy, I must say," observed Lady Carse. "Very," Annie agreed; "but less of a liberty than some would have taken, if I had left it to tempt them. I threw away only what is some man's unlawful property. Others would have thrown away that which belongs to God, and is very precious in His eyes--the human reason, which he has made but a little lower than the glory of the angels." Lady Carse spoke no more--not even when they reached their own doors. Whether she was moody or conscience-stricken, Annie could not tell. All the more anxious was she to do her part; and she went in to pray that the suffering lady might be saved from this new peril--the most fearful of the snares of her most perilous life. Annie did not forget to pray that those who had driven the sufferer to such an extremity as that she could not resist even this means of forgetting her woes, might be struck with such a sense of their cruelty as to save their victim before it was too late. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. HELSA'S NEWS. One day when Annie was trimming her lamp, she observed Helsa, Lady Carse's maid, watching the process earnestly from the door, where she was looking in. "Come in, Helsa," said the widow, in Gaelic, which was more familiar to the girl than English. "Come in, if you have nothing better to do than to see me trim my lamp." "I am afraid about that lamp, and that is the truth," replied Helsa. "I had charge of a lamp at Macdonald's once, when my mother went to the main for a week; but then, if it went out, nobody was much the worse. If this one goes out, and anybody drowns in the harbour, and the blame is mine, what shall I do?" "The blame yours!" said the widow, looking at her. "Yes; when you live at Macdonald's, and I have to keep the lamp. I am not sure that I can keep awake all the night when winter comes: but they say I must."