“No,” I answered, “but I don’t see what difference that could make.” “Sailors would,” she returned darkly. “An’ besides, the bottle didn’t break an’ ’ad ter be smashed afterwards.” “Belinda Ann,” I exclaimed severely, “how can you be so wicked? Don’t you know that it’s very wrong to take notice of omens and to be superstitious and to believe in luck and chance?” She screwed up her mouth and pouted her lips in a way she had when not convinced and too polite to say so (which latter was not often!), and then said doggedly, “Then why was it all those people were thrown into the water by the back-wash, an’ lots on ’em drownded?” which was the first intimation I had of what turned out to be a terrible accident. I regret to say that on this occasion (the first time I had tried to get in “a word in season”) Belinda apparently got the best of it, but for once she bore her victory modestly, being too subdued by the catastrophe and the danger which had approached me to be very jubilant or to triumph openly. Now I understood her flight, for she was afraid lest more horrors were to come, and, regarding me as a precious piece of costly treasure in her care, she had never rested till I was landed in comparative safety. She had even shielded me from the sight of it all, and the chivalrous soul, who would never have known fear on her own account, had yielded to panic for my sake. Thus I was made aware of another characteristic of my East-Ender, namely, the vein of superstition which underlay the practical matter-of-fact front she presented to the workaday world. There was a deep-seated belief in her mind in such things as luck and chance, as I now found out, and when she left me that night she was still firmly convinced that the ship we had seen launched that day would never come to any good! “OUR HERO.” A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO. BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc. CHAPTER XXXI. THE BATTLE OF CORUÑA. Well might Moore cast anxious glances towards the harbour of Coruña, where the vessels from Vigo should have been. They had been delayed by contrary winds; and this failure on their part to arrive in time was a most serious matter. The British Army, brought thus far in safety, would now lie without the means of escape in a narrow trap, between Scylla and Charybdis, hemmed in by the pitiless ocean on one side, by the ever-increasing hordes of the enemy on the other. With unfaltering courage he at once set himself to examine the position, assigning the troops to their various quarters, some in the town of Coruña, some in villages hard by. One range of rocky hills, three or four miles off, would have been the right line of defence; but Moore had not men enough to occupy it. He saw at once that, should he attempt to do so, the French might be able to turn his position, and to cut him off from embarkation.