A Daughter of Fife | Page 5

this most useless of mental processes.
But nevertheless, the stranger had left an influence, and for half an hour
they sat silently musing. Maggie was the first to break its spell. In a low
voice, as she bent lower to the dying fire, she began to talk of the dead
for whom "God had found graves;" and to recall little incidents of their
hard unselfish lives, which particularly touched David's and her own
experience.
"If they were here to-night, Davie--oot on the dark sea--tossed up and
down--pulling in the nets or lines wi' freezing hands--hungry, anxious,
fearfu' o' death--wad we wish it?"
"Na, na, na, Maggie! Where they are noo, the light doesna fade, and the
heart doesna fail, and the full cup never breaks. Come, let us ask o' the
Book thegither. I dinna doot, but we sall get just the word we are
needing."
Maggie rose and took it from its place on the broad shelf by the
window, and laid it down upon the table. David lifted the light and
stood beside her. Then with a reverent upward glance, he opened the
well-used leaves:--
"Maggie, what need we mair? Listen to the word o' the Lord;" and with
a voice tender and triumphant he read aloud--
"_Then are they glad because they be quiet: so He bringeth them unto
their desired haven_."

CHAPTER II.

THE UNKNOWN GUEST.
"She was a form of life and light, That seen, became a part of sight,
And rose where'er I turned mine eye, The Morning Star of Memory."
"Thou art more than all the shrines that hold thee."
The next morning was a very stormy one; there was an iron-gray sky
above a black tumbling sea; and the rain, driven by a mad wind, smote
the face like a blow from a passionate hand. The boats were all at
anchor, with no prospect of a fishing that day; and the fishermen,
gathered in little groups, were muttering over the bad weather. But their
talk was not bitter, like the complaints which landsmen make over
leveled crops. Regarding every thing that happened as the result of
righteous decree, why should they rail at disappointment or misfortune?
Some went slowly to a shed where boats were being built; others sat
down within the doors of their cottages and began to knit their nets, or
to mend such as were out of order.
David could take a landward route to Kinkell, among the shore rocks;
for though the path was often a mere footing, it was well known to him;
and as for the stormy weather, it seemed only a part of the darker and
fiercer tempest in his own soul. He left Maggie early. She watched him
climbing with bent head the misty heights, until a projecting rock hid
him from view; then she went back to her household duties.
The first one was to prepare the room she had rented for its strange
guest and it gave her many a pang to fold away the "kirk clothes" of her
father and brothers and lock them from sight in the big "kist" that was
the family wardrobe. For clothing has a woeful individuality, when we
put it away forever; and the shoes of the dead men had a personality
that almost terrified her. How pitiful, how forsaken, how almost
sentient they looked! Blind with tears, she hid them from sight, and
then turned, as the Bereaved must ever turn, back to the toil and need of
daily life.
There was but one window in the room, a little one opening on hinges,
and glazed with small diamond-shaped bits of glass. The driving storm

had washed it clean, she hung a white curtain before it, and brought
from the living room a pot of scarlet geranium, and a great sea shell,
from whose mouth hung a luxuriant musk plant. Its cool fragrance
filled the room, and gave an almost dainty feeling to the spotlessness of
the deal furniture and the homespun linen. Before the turf fire there was
a square of rag carpet, and the bits of blue and scarlet in it were pretty
contrasts to the white wood of the chairs and table.
The stranger was to have come about noon, but it was the middle of the
afternoon when he arrived. The storm was then nearly over, and there
was a glint of watery sunshine athwart the cold; green, tossing sea.
Maggie had grown anxious at his delay, and then a little cross. At two
o'clock she gave a final peep into the room and said to herself,--"I'll just
get on wi' my wark, let him come, or let him bide awa'. I canna waste
my time waiting for folk that dinna ken the worth o' time."
So when her lodger stood at