As the night darkened, the storm increased. The wind roared among the rocks like the rattling of a thousand carriages over a paved street; and there were times when, after a sudden pause, the blast struck the cottage as if it were a huge missile flung against it, and pressed on its roof and walls till the very floor rocked, and the rafters strained and quivered like the beams of a stranded vessel. There was a ceaseless patter of mingled rain and snow--now lower, now louder; and the fearful thunderings of the waves as they raged among the pointed crags, were mingled with the hoarse roll of the stones along the beach. The old man sat beside the fire fronting the widow and her companion, with his head reclined nearly as low as his knee, and his hands covering his face. There was no attempt at conversation. He seemed to shudder every time the blast yelled along the roof, and as a fiercer gust burst open the door, there was a half-muttered ejaculation. “Heaven itsel’ hae mercy on them! for what can man do in a night like this?” “It is black as pitch!” exclaimed the maiden, who had risen to draw the bolt, “and the drift flees so thick that it feels to the hand like a solid snow-wreath. And, oh, how it lightens!” “Heaven itsel’ hae mercy on them!” again ejaculated the old man. “My two boys,” said he, addressing the widow, “are at the far Firth; an’ how can an open boat live in a night like this!” There seemed something magical in the communication--something that awakened all the sympathies of the poor bereaved woman; and she felt she could forgive him every unkindness. “Waes me!” she exclaimed, “it was in such a night as this, an’ scarcely sae wild, that my Ernest perished.” The old man groaned and wrung his hands. In one of the pauses of the hurricane there was a gun heard from the sea, and shortly after a second. “Some puir vessel in distress,” said the widow, “but, alas! where can succour come frae in sae terrible a night? There is help only in Ane! Waes me! would we no better light up a blaze on the floor, an’, dearest Helen, draw off the cover frae the window? My puir Ernest has told me that my light has aften showed him his bearings frae the deadly bed o’ Dunskaith. That last gun,” for a third was now heard booming over the mingled roar of the sea and the wind, “cam frae the very rock edge. Waes me! maun they perish, an’ sae near?” Helen hastily lighted a bundle of mire-fir, that threw up its red sputtering blaze half-way to the roof, and dropping the covering, continued to wave it opposite the window. Guns were still heard at measured intervals, but apparently from a safer offing; and the last, as it sounded faintly against the wind, came evidently from the interior of the bay. “She has escaped,” said the old man; “it’s a feeble hand that canna do good when the heart is willing;--but what has mine been doing a’ life lang?” He looked at the widow and shuddered.