A Loose End | Page 3

with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be the world's end.
The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open; the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.
It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed, especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before, she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more motherly than filial.

CHAPTER II.
Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the 'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother, we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame Andr��, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"
"And high time it is too that Andr�� had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs. Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her body."
"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he said--"
"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a locked up her purse first, I do."
"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard Andr�� say he didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him, sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with him."
"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way," and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her eyes as she looked down the road.
Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage, and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of the sunset touched in slanting rays