home, for he is waiting for you.’ ‘Oh, take me to him!’ I said; an’ then all at once I found mysel’ on the shore dizzied and blinded wi’ the bright sunshine; for at the cave there was a darkness like that o’ a simmer’s gloamin; an’ when I looked up for William, it was Ernest that stood before me, lifelike and handsome as ever; an’ you were beside him.” The day had been gloomy and lowering, and though there was little wind, a tremendous sea, that as the evening advanced rose higher and higher against the neighbouring precipice, had been rolling ashore since morning. The wind now began to blow in long hollow gusts among the cliffs, and the rain to patter against the widow’s casement. “It will be a storm from the sea,” she said; “the scarts an’ gulls hae been flying landward sin’ daybreak, an’ I hae never seen the ground-swell come home heavier against the rocks. Waes me for the puir sailors that maun bide under it a’!” “In the long stormy nights,” said her companion, “I cannot sleep for thinking of them; though I have no one to bind me to them now. Only look how the sea rages among the rocks as if it were a thing of life--that last wave rose to the crane’s nest. And look, yonder is a boat rounding the rock with only one man in it. It dances on the surf as if it were a cork, and the little bit sail, so black and wet, seems scarcely bigger than a napkin. Is it not bearing in for the boat-haven below?” “My poor old eyes,” replied the widow, “are growing dim, an’ surely no wonder; but yet I think I should ken that boatman. Is it no Eachen Macinla o’ Tarbat?” “Hard-hearted old man!” exclaimed the maiden, “what can be taking him here? Look how his skiff shoots in like an arrow on the long roll o’ the surf!--and now she is high on the beach. How cruel it was of him to rob you of your little property in the very first of your grief! But see, he is so worn out that he can hardly walk over the rough stones. Ah me, he is down!--wretched old man, I must run to his assistance; but no, he has risen again. See, he is coming straight to the house; and now he is at the door.” In a moment after, Eachen entered the cottage. “I am perishing, Lillias,” he said, “with cold and hunger, an’ can gang nae farther--surely ye’ll no shut your door on me in a night like this?” The poor widow had been taught in a far different school. She relinquished to the worn-out boatman her seat by the fire, now hurriedly heaped with fresh fuel, and hastened to set before him the simple viands which her cottage afforded.