There could not be a more luckless meeting. For years before had the crew of the little fishing-yawl been regarded with the bitterest hatred by the temporary inmates of the cave; nor was old Eachen of Tarbat one of the class whose resentments may be safely slighted. He had passed the first thirty years of his life among the buccaneers of South America; he had been engaged in its latter seasons among the smugglers, who even at this early period infested the eastern coasts of Scotland; and Eachen, of all his associates, whether smugglers or buccaneers, had ever been deemed one of the fiercest and most unscrupulous. On his return from America the country was engaged in one of its long wars with Holland, and William Beth, the elder fisherman, who had served in the English fleet, was lying in a Dutch prison at the time, and a report had gone abroad that he was dead. He had inherited some little property from his father in the neighbouring town--a house and a little field, which in his absence was held by an only sister; who, on the report of his death, was of course regarded as a village heiress, and whose affections, in that character, Eachen of Tarbat had succeeded in engaging. They were married, but the marriage had turned out singularly ill; Eachen was dissipated and selfish, and of a harsh, cruel temper; and it was the fate of his poor wife, after giving birth to two boys, the younger inmates of the cave, to perish in the middle of her days, a care-worn, heart-broken creature. Her brother William had returned from Holland shortly before, and on her death claimed and recovered his property from her husband; and from that hour Eachen of Tarbat had regarded him with the bitterest malice. A second cause of dislike, too, had but lately occurred. Ernest Beth, William’s only son, and one of his cousins, the younger son of Eachen, had both fixed their affections on a lovely young girl, the toast of a neighbouring parish; and Ernest, a handsome and high-spirited young man, had proved the successful lover. On returning with his mistress from a fair, only a few weeks previous to this evening, he had been waylaid and grossly insulted by his two cousins; and the insult he might perhaps have borne for the sake of what they seemed to forget--his relationship to their mother; but there was another whom they also insulted, and that he could not bear; and as they were mean enough to take odds against him on the occasion, he had beaten the two spiritless fellows that did so. The old fisherman had heard the ominous remark of the savage as if he heard it not. “We have not met for many years, Eachen,” he said--“not since the death of my poor sister, when we parted such ill friends; but we are shortlived creatures ourselves, surely our anger should be shortlived too. I have come to crave from you a seat by your fire.” “It was no wish of mine, William Beth,” said Eachen, “that we should ever meet; but there is room enough for us all beside the fire.”